Lisa Marie Presley

Riley Keough sat with host Fearne Cotton to talk about her mother Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown (which she helped finish). They talked Lisa Marie, grief, trauma and parenthood.

• Riley encourages people to record their parents telling their story to get to know their lives and family history because she feels so blessed to have 16 tapes of her mother's story.

• Lisa Marie asked Riley for help with the book in December and she passed in January. She describes having a call with her mother and her mother's manager where Lisa was lost with what direction to go with the book, she hated talking about herself since she was shy and had low self-esteem.

• Lisa Marie told Riley she knew her better than she knew herself and wanted her to write the book for her. Riley said she would help her, not knowing she would die weeks later and that was on her mind afterwards.

• Riley was getting her mom's albums and music and other possessions from associates in the months after her mother's death and calls the process of getting the memoir tapes intense. She says it was eventually comforting because it felt like she was on the phone with her mother.

• Riley found Daisy Jones and the Six, particularly the rehearsal period, fun [note: she previously stated the series helped her through her grief over brother Benjamin's suicide]. She thinks they got lucky with the cast in how well they interacted and bonded.

• She talks about Taylor Jenkins Reid before the Los Angeles stop of the book tour texting her and saying she was going to keep it light since the book was so heavy. Riley says she appreciated it since it was draining talking about her personal trauma all day throughout the tour.

• Sam Claflin texted her asking to come to the panel and she felt like they were back doing DJATS press.

• She recalls watching little video phone clips of her brother Benjamin over and over after he died and for her mother, she had an abundance of audio tapes.

• Riley never thought about pretending to be Lisa Marie to finish her book, it was always going to be her voice to fill in the gaps. She says she didn't necessarily want to finish the book because she doesn't like attention on herself and she was raised to be private. Her mother's goal was to help and connect with people with her story.

• She says she's spent her life trying to work out why her mom had such low self-worth and she feels she has a few more clues towards an answer. She thinks from birth people had agendas with Lisa Marie, wanting to be her friend for what she offered. Riley says she experienced the same with kids wanting to go to her house to see if her mother or Michael Jackson was there. She had the same questions of trust and worth as her mother.

• Riley talks about how cruel the tabloids were to Lisa Marie, calling her fat and saying she would end up like her father Elvis, and that made her incredibly insecure.

• She says her mother also didn't have close relationships or people telling Lisa she was amazing or whatever until Riley's father Danny when Lisa was older [note: Lisa was 17 when she met Danny]. Her mother had "almost none of it."

• Elvis' death and the loss of that bond dictated the rest of Lisa's life. Riley says she could feel from a young age her mother's grief and sadness and Lisa's relationship with Elvis was her most important other than the ones she had with her children. Lisa Marie was always looking for that closeness to her father and she never processed his death.

• Riley says Lisa Marie never liked to talk about Elvis' death and the grief because she was always asked about it by the press and it would irritate her. She thinks her mother didn't feel safe or comfortable discussing it [note: in the book, Riley says her mother and father never discussed Elvis’ death throughout their nine year on/off relationship].

• She says the family loved going to Graceland because it wasn't a place of sadness for Lisa Marie, it was fun for the family and they could feel her joy there. Lisa felt free, comforted and connected to her father there. Her mom loved to ride the golf carts around the Graceland lawn until her death.

• As they got older, the fun at Graceland went from having banana pudding in the house to having drinks and dancing. Graceland was always a place of joy for the family until Benjamin died and was buried at the property. Graceland went from a place of happiness to a place of grief.

• Riley found it very hard to go back to Graceland after Benjamin died, while her mother found it easy because there was a sense of closeness and comfort with the graves there. Riley didn't understand Lisa's experience until Benjamin died, and she says it certainly wasn't her experience. She's usually apprehensive about going to Graceland until she's there, and now she's trying to keep the same life and joy for her own kids and sisters.

• Riley says she's had to learn the lesson of letting life be what it is and surrendering to it after her brother's death.

• Lisa Marie had a deep fear of her children dying. She couldn't watch movies where parents lost their children and spoke often about that fear. Lisa would always say she wouldn't make it if she lost a child so Riley knew her mother would struggle immensely after Benjamin's death, especially since Benjamin was Lisa's baby, they were so close.

• Lisa Marie just accepted she was living in grief and Riley says she kind of saw a pathway for her mother to live in that way. However, Lisa would say her life was over when her son died. She said she was there for her children but she didn't want to be there and Riley says "fair enough." Her instinct was her mother wouldn't survive Benjamin's death.

• The host notes that Riley seems sturdy and responsible, and that she has seemingly broken the chain of familial trauma and addiction. Riley doesn't necessarily agree- she thinks her mother's hopelessness was due to her addiction, same for her brother, and things would have been very different otherwise. Riley says since she has never been an addict herself, she doesn't know if she's broken any chain. She hopes her children don't have addiction issues themselves.

• Riley thinks things like depression, pain, suffering is a part of being in this world and she doesn't like the phrasing people use with mental illness because it makes it seem like something is wrong with them over just experiencing trauma and pain. However, she does acknowledge her family's generational trauma and she hopes there's no more addiction troubles in the family.

• She finds comfort in nothing staying the same, everything will change and situations will pass. She opts to feel emotions rather than pushing it away.

• Riley agrees with the host that you're meant to feel your emotions and we're not meant to just be happy all the time. She clarifies that's what she means about how people talk about mental illness bugs her- she thinks if your feelings are severe you need to get help but people shouldn't be ashamed to be depressed or whatever. She says there's so much conditioning to not cry or be angry or grieve and thus she tries to feel it. Pushing her emotions away causes anxiety in her.

• Riley thinks women are conditioned not to feel emotions or get angry, and repressed anger or sadness leading to anxiety.

• Riley talks briefly about her parents' relationship post-divorce. Until she was in her early 20s, she thought she had the most amazing, eccentric parents and while they were, things got more intense [note: she doesn't elaborate further but in the memoir talks about the family's partying, addictions and drinking worsening and she was the only sober one. Former scientologist members confirmed during an unspecified time, Danny did struggle with substance abuse mirroring Lisa Marie].

• She says even as a child, she felt lucky to have her parents because she felt real, unconditional love from her mom and dad. She says she just loved them so much.

• She didn't know the Michael Jackson situation had upset her dad until she overheard a phone conversation because they had prioritized their children and "conscious uncoupling." [Note: in the memoir, Riley recalls as a young child snooping in on a phone call between her parents and hearing her angry father tell her mother "get my son off that guy's [Michael Jackson's] fucking lap." She says it was the first time she realized things weren't great between her parents]

• Riley says people were always surprised to learn that her dad lived in the guest house and he went on tour with her mom but she felt lucky and grateful that was her life.

• She says Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson related to each other through their isolated lives and experiences and they connected to each other.

• She says Lisa Marie fell in love with MJ and couldn't fake it, she would be incapable of it.

• Riley says her mother made people uncomfortable because she was so authentic and honest, if she was having a bad day, she wouldn't lie and say she was fine. She would leave if someone she didn't like was in a room and divorced a husband if she stopped liking them.

• Riley says while her mother wanted friends and to fall in love and she was insecure, she also didn't care if people liked her and Riley thinks that's a good life lesson and liberating.

You can watch the whole chat here if you wish: https://youtu.be/VVXIfIlgVF4