Revelations on marrying Michael Jackson, fighting addiction and keeping son Benjamin’s body after his death

Lisa Marie Presley didn’t get to complete her memoir, so her daughter Riley Keough carried it over the end line.

From Right here to the Nice Unknown, out now, tells the story of the late Lisa Marie’s distinctive expertise rising up as the one daughter of “the King,” Elvis Presley. After her father’s death in 1977, she had a really Hollywood life, together with briefly marrying “the King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. She suffered devastating loss — the death of her son, Benjamin Keough, by suicide in 2020 — and struggled with opioid addiction.

Lisa Marie’s final 10 years had been “so brutally hard” that she struggled to jot down the e book, Riley wrote within the memoir.

At her mom’s behest, the Daisy Jones & the Six actress agreed to assist her, assuming they’d work collectively. One month later, in January 2023, Lisa Marie died, leaving Riley to complete the e book in tribute, utilizing audio recordings Lisa Marie had made, supplemented along with her recollections.

“She was incredibly insecure, and I think there were moments where she kind of was going, ‘Why am I even writing a book about myself?’” Riley instructed Oprah Winfrey on Tuesday’s An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley. “She didn’t like talking about herself particularly.”

Lisa Marie wrote within the e book that she was pushed “to help other people somehow,” particularly others impacted by suicide.

From the most important revelations on the memoir pages to the CBS particular taped at Graceland, right here’s what we discovered about Lisa Marie’s joys and ache.

Riley was ‘worried’ about Lisa Marie’s well being in her closing weeks

Lisa Marie was 54 when she died on account of small bowel obstruction, a complication of bariatric surgical procedure from years earlier.

“The last three weeks that she was alive, I was with her a few times [and] I felt worried,” Riley instructed Winfrey. “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 interactions with her that she just felt detached in a way, a kind of a resignation.”

Lisa Marie Presley supported Baz Luhrmann’s movie Elvis, starring Austin Butler, within the days earlier than her death. On Jan. 8, 2023, she attended an occasion with daughter Riley and Butler. (Eric Charbonneau/Getty Photographs for Warner Bros.)

The e book particulars how Lisa Marie was plagued with abdomen ache and nausea earlier than her death. The day she died, she texted Riley’s dad, Danny Keough, who lived along with her off and on after their 1994 break up, asking him to carry her antacid.

“Can you please help? My stomach’s hurting worse than ever,” Lisa Marie’s message mentioned, in response to the e book.

“By the time he had gotten to her with the Tums she’d asked for, the housekeeper had found her on the floor,” Riley wrote.

Lisa Marie was resuscitated however suffered cardiac arrest once more within the hospital and died.

Riley mentioned Benjamin’s death was a catastrophic loss for Lisa Marie

Benjamin died in July 2020 on the age of 27.

“The moment my brother died, I was like, ‘This is the end of her,’ because they were so close,” Riley instructed Winfrey. “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.”

Lisa Marie wrote in her memoir that Benjamin “was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He’d tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had. It was a generational f***ing cycle. Gladys loved my dad so much that she drank herself to death worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a f***ing chance.”

Riley wrote that whereas Benjamin was a “binge drinker” who had been to rehab, she wasn’t frightened about him. After his death, she and Lisa Marie appeared by means of his cellphone and discovered a textual content he had written about his personal psychological well being issues.

Lisa Marie saved Benjamin’s body at dwelling for two months after his death

Whereas deciding on Benjamin’s closing resting place, Lisa Marie saved his body preserved in a coffin at their dwelling utilizing dry ice in a room set at 55 levels.

Within the e book, Lisa Marie wrote that in California, there’s no regulation that you need to bury a body instantly. She discovered solace in “caring for him and keeping him there. I think it would scare the living f***ing piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me. I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become okay with laying him to rest.”

The e book famous that following Elvis’s death, there was a public viewing of his body at Graceland. After the mourners cleared out every night time, Lisa Marie would go to the casket in the lounge and speak to her father.

Riley instructed Winfrey that an “absurd moment” occurred after Benjamin’s death when she and her mother have been getting tattoos that have been replicas of ones Benjamin had. Lisa Marie, hoping to get hers excellent, introduced the tattoo artist into the room the place Benjamin’s body was within the coffin to point out him his hand.

“Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her dead son,” Riley wrote. “I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”

That’s once they knew that Benjamin needed to go to his closing resting place.

“Even my mom said that she could feel [Benjamin] talking to her, saying ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f***!” Riley wrote.

Benjamin’s memorial was held in Malibu, Calif., and he was buried at Graceland with Elvis — and later Lisa Marie.

Riley mentioned Lisa Marie’s addiction battle was an ‘unbearably dark’ time

Lisa Marie began battling addiction at 40 after the C-section start of her twins, Harper and Finley Lockwood, with Michael Lockwood in 2008.

“She [pulled me] aside and said, ‘I’ve been taking opiates. And at first, I was taking them for pain. Then I was taking them to sleep at night. Now it’s like I’m taking them for fun,’” Riley instructed Winfrey.

At her all-time low, Lisa Marie was taking 80 painkillers a day, she wrote in her memoir. She additionally used cocaine. She was in and out of rehab, however remedy wasn’t working. She was very ailing, spitting up blood.

Round that point, in 2016, Lisa Marie left Lockwood and it was a messy break up. Her property have been frozen, and they’d a bitter custody battle that required Lisa Marie to attend court-mandated rehab and bear drug testing. Lisa Marie wanted a court-certified monitor to see the twins, so Riley took on that position. Her mom and youthful sisters moved in along with her — in addition to her father and brother to assist.

“It seemed like it could have been good to have everyone together. But it felt like the end of things,” Riley wrote. “We’d had this amazing, colorful, beautiful, abundant, fun, joyful life — but in that house, it took a turn and got unbearably dark for all of us.”

Riley wrote within the e book that she was happy with Lisa Marie for not relapsing after Benjamin’s death.

Lisa Marie particulars marriage to Michael Jackson — together with that he claimed to be a virgin once they bought collectively

Lisa Marie was nonetheless married to Danny when the King of Pop began to pursue her romantically in 1994. Issues have been pleasant at first, and then he invited her to Las Vegas, the place he swept her off her toes.

“Michael said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m completely in love with you. I want us to get married and for you to have my children,’” Lisa Marie wrote. “I didn’t say anything immediately, but then I said, ‘I’m really flattered, I can’t even talk.’ By then, I felt I was in love with him too.”

Lisa Marie wrote that Jackson “told me he was still a virgin. I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened. I was terrified because I didn’t want to make the wrong move.”

Lisa Marie mentioned she really fell for Michael Jackson. (Kim Kulish/Sygma by way of Getty Photographs)

She wrote that Jackson “decided to first kiss me, he just did it. He was instigating everything. The physical stuff started happening, which I was shocked at. I had thought that maybe we wouldn’t do anything until we got married, but he said, ‘I’m not waiting!’”

They married within the Dominican Republic on Could 26, 1994 — lower than three weeks after her divorce to Danny Keough was finalized. On their honeymoon she was “so happy,” she wrote, noting, “I’ve never been that happy again.”

She wrote that she genuinely liked him. She felt he had an “energy” that “I’ve never ever seen or felt in my entire life, other than with my dad.”

They have been collectively when the kid molestation allegations in opposition to Jackson surfaced. She mentioned she urged him to settle the lawsuit or it might hang-out him.

“I never saw a goddamn thing like that,” she wrote of the alleged abuse. “I personally would’ve killed him if I had.”

After Jackson went off script on the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards and kissed Lisa Marie, she questioned if he did it “for press,” she wrote, and began to not belief him. She additionally frightened that if she had Jackson’s little one, which he saved pushing for, he would take the kid away and not let her elevate it.

His drug addiction was the ultimate straw. Whereas visiting him within the hospital, Lisa Marie recalled a “red flag” when she found that he had “his own anesthesiologist.” She mentioned she began to ask too many questions — about which medication he was being administered — and Jackson despatched her dwelling from the hospital and began to close her out.

She filed for divorce in 1996, however they didn’t break up straight away. Riley wrote that “for years” they continued to go to Jackson at his Neverland Ranch — even after Jackson married Debbie Rowe — earlier than her mother ended the “toxic” relationship.

Lisa Marie was additionally briefly married to Nicolas Cage for 3 months in 2002.

Lisa Marie’s relationship with Priscilla was sophisticated

Within the wake of Lisa Marie’s death, there was a battle over Graceland. Riley grew to become the only proprietor and her grandmother Priscilla Presley acquired a $1 million settlement.

Winfrey requested Riley if her grandmother could be buried at Graceland, and she replied that she would if she needed to be.

Lisa Marie’s reflections on her mother within the e book are harsh. She was a self-proclaimed daddy’s lady who felt nearer to her father, who she believed was like a “god.”

Lisa Marie wrote that she thought Priscilla “didn’t want me.” She claimed her mom instructed her that she considered attempting to “fall off her horse to cause a miscarriage.” Lisa Marie wrote that Priscilla — who began courting Elvis when she was 14 and he was 24 — frightened about dropping her body and appears as a result of so many ladies have been after the singer.

Priscilla and Elvis’s marriage ended when Lisa Marie was 4 and Priscilla moved to Los Angeles. Lisa Marie, who needed to break up her time between her dad and mom, resented being taken away from Graceland, the place she was happiest rambling concerning the property in her golf cart.

After Elvis’s death, Lisa Marie was in her mother’s care full-time. Within the e book, she wrote that she felt her mother considered her as a “trophy” and that she wished she had gotten a “different daughter.” Lisa Marie wrote that she was despatched away lots — to camps or faculties — or had nannies caring for her whereas Priscilla traveled. As a rebellious teen, she considered her mom as a “chronic stop sign.”

Lisa Marie alleged that one in every of her mom’s boyfriends sexually abused her for years as a toddler.

Lisa Marie additionally wrote about Priscilla becoming a member of Scientology after assembly John Travolta, one of many group’s most well-known members, within the late Seventies. Lisa Marie was 10 and was enrolled in a Scientology faculty. She wrote that she later lived within the Scientology Superstar Centre in L.A. Lisa Marie left the church someday between 2012 and 2014.

Lisa Marie along with her mom, Priscilla Presley, and daughters Harper Lockwood, Riley Keough and Finley Lockwood in 2022. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

The memoir notes that Lisa Marie and Priscilla grew nearer once they each had infants. In 1987, Priscilla had son Navarone Garibaldi, and Lisa Marie had Riley in 1989.

Riley wrote within the e book, “My mom wanted to forgive her. And she wanted to own her part in their difficult relationship.”

Following Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla filed a petition questioning the “authenticity” of a 2016 modification Lisa Marie had made to her dwelling belief. The change eliminated Priscilla and Lisa Marie’s former enterprise supervisor Barry Siegel as co-trustees and gave management of the belief — the Graceland mansion and a 15% stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises, which collectively reportedly introduced in a mixed $110 million in 2022 — to her kids Riley and Benjamin.

Riley and Priscilla reached a decision within the authorized matter final yr and have been cordial publicly since.

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