Oprah talks to Riley Keough about Elvis, Lisa Marie & more during CBS special: What we learned
Michael Jackson, death, grief, love and tattoos were among the subjects discussed Tuesday night during "An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley," an hourlong CBS special that brought together Oprah Winfrey and Elvis' granddaughter, Riley Keough, for a conversation at Graceland in Memphis.
In a prime-time event that testified to the continued star power and perceived audience appeal of the Presley name, Keough — the actress/filmmaker who is the first-born grandchild of the King of Rock 'n' Roll — joined Oprah for an interview/conversation/estate tour timed to Tuesday's release of "From Here to the Great Unknown," the memoir that Keough completed after the death of its primary author, her mother — Elvis' only child — Lisa Marie Presley.
Largely constructed from many hours of Lisa Marie's tape-recorded memories, the memoir is Winfrey's 108th pick for "Oprah's Book Club," a long-running project that generally guarantees that the chosen book will make its debut on the publishing industry's significant best-seller lists.
The CBS special was billed as Keough's "first in-depth interview since her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died unexpectedly in 2023." Lisa Marie died Jan. 12 of that year at age 54.
The Oprah special not only launched the Random House book but Keough's book tour. The actress' schedule for the week includes several high-profile if sub-Oprah appearances, including Oct. 9 spots on "The View" (ABC), "Live with Kelly & Mark" (syndicated) and "Late Night with Seth Meyers" (NBC); an Oct. 10 visit to "Today with Hoda & Jenna" (NBC); and an Oct. 11 stop on "The Drew Barrymore Show" (syndicated). The week culminates in a public talk by Keough at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Soundstage at Graceland. Tickets to that event are $40 each and are available at graceland.com. The ticket price includes a lithograph and a copy of the book, each signed by Keough.
Here's what we learned, along with some other takeaways from the Oprah-Keough special.
The title of Lisa Marie Presley's memoir
"From Here to the Great Unknown" takes its title from the lyrics of "Where No One Stands Alone," a duet that Lisa Marie Presley recorded alongside a 1967 vocal track of her father's as the title track for a 2018 compilation album of Elvis' gospel songs. Keough told Winfrey she picked the lyrics — "Hold my hand all the way, every hour, every day, from here to the great unknown" — for the book's title because they provide comfort and hope by suggesting that loved ones who have died are moving "into a new adventure."
Michael Jackson
Winfrey marveled that Lisa Marie Presley "actually lived in Graceland and lived in Neverland in one lifetime." Keough said that her mother, who was married to Michael Jackson for two years starting in 1994, "was really obsessed" with Jackson, and "would run to the bathroom and put makeup on" when he came home, to look good. "He was only kind and loving to me and my family," Keough said of her mother's second husband, her King of Pop stepfather. "I saw them in a seemingly normal, happy relationship." She added: "I think probably our version of 'normal' is a little bit different."
Grief, chaos and coffins
A theme of the show was Lisa Marie's longtime struggle with grief. She was 4 when Elvis and her mother, Priscilla Presley, divorced; she was 9 when her father died; and toughest of all was the death by suicide of her 27-year-old son, Benjamin Storm Presley Keough, in 2020. "I just couldn't imagine a world where she would make it without him," Riley Keough told Winfrey. "She would say, 'I'm gonna die of a broken heart,' and I think we all felt that." ("We" including the youngest of Lisa Marie's four children, the twins, Harper and Finley Lockwood, now 16.) Winfrey said Lisa Marie told her, after her son's death: "I don't know if I'll make it... I have no reason to go on... Only for the girls, I'll just be living for the girls."
Elvis died on Aug. 16, 1977. The next day, thousands of mourners passed through the Graceland living room (the same room where Keough and Winfrey had their interview) to pay their respects to the King, where his body was essentially lying in state. According to the hours of tapes that Lisa Marie narrated in preparing her memoir, young Lisa Marie, late at night, visited her father in his coffin. "I was so busy looking at everyone else's grief that I couldn't actually have mine yet," Lisa Marie said. She went to the casket and asked her father, "Why is this happening and why are you doing this?" No wonder, Keough said, that she sometimes blamed her grandfather for her mother's unhappiness and sometimes "chaotic" substance abuse.
After Benjamin Keough's death, she kept her son on dry ice in a casket in her California home, for "months," Riley Keough said, until the body could be moved for burial in the Meditation Garden at Graceland. At one point, Lisa Marie had a tattoo artist come to the house and view the body, so she could get tattoos that matched her son's. "On paper, I could see how this sounds completely insane and absurd, but my mom was very much herself... I stayed quiet because she was my mom and she does what she wants," Keough said.
Boost for Graceland
Memphis tourism officials and Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises representatives — including Keough, heir to the Graceland estate — likely could not have been happier with the program, which to a certain extent functioned as a plug for not just the memoir but for the Elvis tourist experience. The show began with the Oprah driving through the mansion’s signature musical-note gates, while singing Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Winfrey described Elvis’ as “a larger-than-life superstar” with an “unmistakable” voice and “moves that shook the world.” She called him “the undisputed and forever King of Rock ‘n' Roll.”
For the most part, the mansion looked beautiful or at least intriguing, from the Jungle Room to the horse stables. The interview was conducted in the Graceland living room, with Winfrey and Keough framed by the room’s famous stained-glass peacocks; each woman was dressed in white, to match the heavenly-cloud effect of the room’s white carpet and white upholstery. Winfrey shared plenty of her own Presley family stories, revealing a longtime friendship with Lisa Marie; she said she and Elvis' daughter called each other "cuz" and "cousin," because Winfrey's maternal grandmother was named Presley.
GRACELAND IN MEMPHIS: Elvis Presley offers a look inside Graceland in 1965: See the photos here
Love lesson
Riley Keough and her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, an Australian stuntman the actress met on the set of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” have a 2-year-old daughter, Tupelo, named for Elvis’ birth town in Mississippi. When Winfrey asked Keough “What is the greatest lesson you learned from your mom you want to pass on to Tupelo?,” Keough responded: “If I can just make her feel loved the way my mom made us feel loved — it was unconditional, truly. We got into fights, she did things I did not approve of, we’d have awful interactions, but the love was always there.”