Priscilla Presley, the former wife of the legendary musician Elvis Presley, is set to have her side of the couple’s love story depicted in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming biopic “Priscilla.”
The A24 film is based on Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” per Variety — and from the looks of its first official trailer, released Wednesday, the movie intends to go beyond heavy eye makeup and Aqua Net.
Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown,” “Bad Times at the El Royale”) stars as Priscilla, who met the King of Rock and Roll at a party in a West Germany Air Force base in 1959 at age 14. Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria,” “The Kissing Booth”) will play Elvis, who was 24 when he first laid eyes on his bride-to-be.
“When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend,” reads A24’s synopsis for the movie. “Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage.”
Presley, now 78, was in the news earlier this year following the death of her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, and a subsequent estate dispute with her granddaughter, the actor Riley Keough.
In a 1985 essay for People, Presley wrote that she was often told as an adolescent and a teenager that she “was the prettiest girl in school, but I never felt that way.”
“I had gotten looks from boys, and once a picture of me in a tight sweater was stolen from the school bulletin board,” she wrote. “Yet I was still a child, embarrassed about my own sexuality.”
Presley also described the dynamic between herself and her much older flame.
“In 1959, after my father was assigned to Wiesbaden, West Germany [headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe], I found myself deeply involved with Elvis,” she wrote. “Something in his Southern upbringing had taught him that the ‘right’ girl was to be saved for marriage. I was that girl. At the same time, he molded me into his woman. I wore the clothes, hairstyle and makeup of his careful choosing.”
She emphasized that she was still very much a child at the time of their courtship.
“My parents became confused and bewildered by our relationship. We tried to make them believe that it was proper and platonic, and they wanted to believe me,” Presley wrote. “Whenever they tried to stop us from seeing each other, I pleaded and cried and made them and myself miserable. In retrospect, I don’t think anything could have stopped me from seeing Elvis.”
Elvis and Priscilla Presley divorced in 1973. Elvis died in 1977.
Coppola has said “Priscilla” will be very different from “Elvis,” last year’s biopic of the singer from director Baz Luhrmann.
“I loved how Baz approached his story in a very collage-y way, but I’m glad it didn’t go into much of Priscilla’s story because now I can really dive deep,” Coppola told Collider.
“I love that people were so into his film about Elvis, and now in a few years there’ll be another film about Priscilla,” she added. “I think it’ll be interesting to have two completely different interpretations of the same events and time period.”
“Priscilla” is set to open in theaters this October.