Ain’t no friend of mine?
Riley Keough, 34, was named the sole trustee of mother Lisa Marie Presley’s estate and the new owner of Graceland on Friday following a contentious battle with her grandmother, Priscilla Presley, 78.
Nearly seven months after Lisa Marie’s tragic death at the age of 54, it sounds like the relationship between Keough and Priscilla is still all shook up.
“I’m trying to think of a way to answer it that’s not a 20-minute conversation,” Keough tells Vanity Fair in its September issue, due out Aug. 15, when asked if things between her and Priscilla are “happy.”
“There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was […] Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy.”
Shortly after Lisa Marie died on Jan. 12, Priscilla filed a petition disputing a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie’s will that had removed her as co-trustee and put Riley and her brother, Benjamin Storm Presley Keough, in charge. Benjamin died in 2020 by suicide.
Friday’s court action allows Priscilla to be a paid special adviser to the trust and to be buried at Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis.
Priscilla and Elvis finalized their divorce in 1973. He died in 1977.
Keough tells Vanity Fair she last saw her mother at a party for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” a day after the Golden Globes were held Jan. 10. The “Daisy Jones & the Six” star painfully recalled “how beautiful” her mother looked.
“When I lost my brother, there was no road map whatsoever, and it was a lot of big emotions that I didn’t know what to do with,” she said of Benjamin’s death.
“When I lost my mom, I was familiar with the process a little bit more, and I found working to be really helpful. I find it triggering when people say happiness is a choice, but in that moment, I did feel like there was a choice in front of me to give up and let this event take me out or have the courage to work through it. I started trying to move through it and not let it take me out.”
It was revealed last month that Lisa Marie died of a small bowel obstruction tied to bariatric surgery she had several years ago.
She was laid to rest at Graceland next to Benjamin.
For her part, Keough says she is undergoing holistic treatment for Lyme disease in Switzerland as she raises her daughter, Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen, whom she secretly welcomed with husband Ben Smith-Petersen via surrogate in August 2022.
