On Monday at the Venice Film Festival, Priscilla Presley was the center of attention.
Following the screening of Sofia Coppola’s new film Priscilla, a biopic based on Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, the Presley family matriarch appeared to become upset. Presley, 78, attended the global premiere of the movie in Venice.
Presley was seen wiping tears from her eyes as the audience cheered her, 52-year-old Coppola, and the movie’s performers, Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, who play Priscilla and Elvis Presley, respectively, in a video that was published to Twitter and is now known as X. Given that it was shot in Canada with a non-AMPTP studio, the SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement was approved to the A24 movie during the strike.
Coppola could be seen hugging Presley while Spaeny and Elordi, all 25, stood nearby. According to Variety, the audience in Venice gave the film a standing ovation for a total of seven minutes.
Presley also showed signs of emotion when she attended an earlier news conference for the movie and referred to Elvis as “the love of my life” when talking about her choice to divorce the legend in 1972.
When asked what portions of the movie affected her the most, Priscilla—who had not initially taken the stage at the press conference with Coppola, Spaeny, and Elordi—took the microphone.
“It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that. But it didn’t mar our relationship. We still remained very close,” Priscilla recalled of how she and Elvis, who died at 42 in 1977, handled their relationship post-divorce.
“And of course, we had our daughter, and I made sure that he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other,” she added.
One year after filmmaker Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie, which starred Austin Butler as the renowned artist, proved to be a box office triumph, comes Priscilla, which depicts the tale of Priscilla and Elvis’s love story and marriage from Priscilla’s point of view. In the film, Olivia DeJonge played the role of Priscilla.
