Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter Riley Keough talks about her “complicated” family situation after settlement with Priscilla Presley
Riley Keough, daughter of Lisa Marie Presley, opened up about some of the more private aspects of her life.
In a new Vanity Fair cover story published Tuesday, the “Daisy Jones and the Six” actress recalled the last time she saw her mother before her death, and the tension she later experienced with her grandmother Priscilla Presley.
Keough recounted that the last time she saw Lisa Marie Presley was at an “Elvis” movie party the day after the Golden Globe Awards in January, which took place days before her mother’s death.
“We had dinner together,” she said. “That was the last time I saw her. I remember thinking how beautiful she looked, and that was my strongest memory of the dinner.”
Keough reached a settlement agreement in May with her grandmother Priscilla Presley, Elvis Presley’s only wife and Lisa Marie’s mother, over Priscilla’s petition challenging the validity of her late daughter’s will.
“When my mother died, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives,” Keough told Vanity Fair. “It felt like the floor had been taken out from under us and the ground was melting out from under us. Everyone was in a bit of a panic about how to move on, and it took us a while to understand the details of the situation, because it’s complicated. We are a family, but there is also a big business part of our family. So I think things needed to be clarified,” he added.
As for whether her grandmother is happy now, Keough replied, “Things with grandma will be happy. They’ve never stopped being happy.” She added: “I’m trying to think of a way to respond that doesn’t involve a 20-minute conversation.”
“There was a little bit of trouble, but now everything is going to be like it was. She a beautiful woman, and she was an important part of creating my grandfather’s legacy and Graceland. It’s very important to her. He was the love of her life,” Keough continued. “Anything that suggests otherwise in the press saddens me because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy. That’s her whole life,” he insisted.
“So it’s a big responsibility that she’s tried to take on. None of that had ever been part of our relationship before. She’s just been my grandmother,” he added.
In the Vanity Fair article, Keough also revealed information about the daughter that many people only learned she had after she mentioned her in a letter she wrote that her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, read during her mother Lisa Marie Presley’s funeral in January.
Keough revealed that her daughter, Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen, was born through surrogacy in August 2022.
“I can have children, but it seemed like the best option for what I was going through physically with the autoimmune problem,” Keough explained, apparently referring to her Lyme disease diagnosis.
As for her baby’s name – which refers to the birthplace of her world-famous grandfather Elvis, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935 – the actress said, “It’s funny because we picked his name before the Elvis movie.”
“I was like, ‘This is cool because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family, it’s not like Memphis or something,” Keough said. “Then when the Elvis movie came out, I was like, ‘Tupelo this and Tupelo that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But that’s OK.”
Keough said her daughter’s middle name is a tribute to her late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 27.