Elvis Presley: 3 Biggest Takeaways From Riley Keough’s Interview About Lisa Marie Presley

Riley Keough sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview at Elvis Presley‘s Graceland to discuss her mother Lisa Marie Presley‘s new book, Into the Great Unknown. Lisa Marie recorded stories about her life with the intent of publishing a memoir. After Lisa Marie’s death in January 2023, her daughter Riley Keough was tasked with finishing the book. Here are 3 of the biggest takeaways from her interview with Winfrey about her mother’s recollections growing up Presley.

Riley Keough was ‘worried’ about her mother, Lisa Marie Presley

Lisa Marie Presley “worried” her daughter, Riley Keough, in the weeks before her death. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Keough told Oprah Winfrey, “The last three weeks that she was alive I was with her a few times that I felt worried.”

“I think there was always sort of an undertone for me. Because of this feeling that I was on borrowed time with her. But there were a couple of interactions with her that she felt detached in a way. A kind of a resignation,” Keough stated.

Lisa Marie Presley attended the Golden Globe Awards to watch Austin Butler take home a trophy for his work in Elvis on January 12, 2023. She appeared unsteady on her feet at the event. In two days, she was dead of cardiac arrest brought on by complications stemming from small bowel obstruction.

Lisa Marie Presley couldn’t let go of son Benjamin Keough’s body after his death

In From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley admitted to keeping her son Benjamin Keough’s corpse on dry ice at her home. This was so Presley could grieve her son in a way she felt was best and figure out the logistics of his burial.

Riley Keough told Oprah Winfrey, “The moment my brother died, I was like, ‘this is the end of her,’ because they were so close. They were as close as Elvis was with his mother, and I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him.”

In the memoir, Presley described mourning her father, Elvis similarly. She said she felt a sense of closeness to his body, instead of fear.

Presley was just 9 when Elvis died. His body lay in state in Graceland’s music room. “I went down to where he was lying in the casket, just to be with him, to touch his face and hold his hand, to talk to him,” the book reads.

“I asked him, ‘Why is this happening? Why are you doing this?’”

Riley Keough said she felt ‘frustrated’ toward Elvis Presley when she was younger

Elvis Presley was an enigma for Riley Keough, as he died years before she was born. Keough explained she didn’t understand her mother’s feelings about losing her father. It appears that Presley never fully got over his death.

“I had a mother who was kind of feeling like ‘how could you leave me’ in a sense, and I lived with that,” she said. “I was young, but I kind of related him to causing my mother to feel pain, so I remember being young and feeling frustrated that he did that.”

Keough inherited Graceland after her mother’s death. She now oversees the important historical home and irreplaceable treasures that draw half a million visitors each year to Memphis, Tennessee.

However, the home doesn’t appear to give Keough the same comfort it did her mother. Presley said in many different interviews that Graceland always felt at home when she would visit. It was one of the main reasons she continued to spend holidays in Memphis when she lived in California.

“I don’t want to come here usually, and I have to sort of force myself to come,” Keough told Winfrey. “And then once I’m here, I really feel a sense of closeness when I go sit in the meditation garden.”

Riley Keough’s interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on CBS. It can be streamed on Paramount Plus.