Riley Keough said her mother Lisa Marie Presley felt “detached” and “tired” in the weeks before her unexpected death in January last year.
US actress Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, has completed the memoir her mother started before she died at the age of 54, titled From Here To The Great Unknown.
In the book, Lisa Marie writes about the day her father Elvis died, her struggles with addiction after the birth of her twins Harper and Finley Lockwood, her two-year marriage to music superstar Michael Jackson and the death of her son Benjamin in 2020.
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The Daisy Jones And The Six star, the eldest of Lisa Marie’s four children, spoke to Oprah Winfrey about her mother’s death following complications from bariatric surgery.
Lisa Marie’s death came days after she attended the 80th annual Golden Globe awards, where actor Austin Butler took home the best actor award for his portrayal of Elvis in the eponymous Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic.
“The last sort of three weeks that she was alive, I was with her a few times that I felt worried,” Keough said during An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie, and Riley, which was broadcast on US network CBS.
“I think there was always 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 just felt detached in a way, and like a resignation, I don’t know how to describe it.”
Keough said how she felt on a family trip to Disneyland and the next time she saw her at dinner “which was the last time I saw her”.
“There was just something strange, I don’t know how to describe it, she just felt detached, tired,” the 35-year-old said.
When asked if she felt her mother had relapsed into drug use, she said: “It didn’t feel like drugs, I have a lot of experience with the drugs – it felt like a tired person.
“I sensed it. And then we walked her to her car and that was the last time I saw her.”
Keough said she was in grief for the loss of her brother when her mother died.
“I think I was resistant to it (grief) at first, going I can’t handle this again and I think it changes all the time,” she told Winfrey during the interview in her father’s former home Graceland.
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“I have months that go by where I feel like I’m in a place that feels lighter about it, and then I have moments where it feels incredibly difficult.”
Keough recalled the body of her brother, who died by suicide aged 27, was kept in a coffin in their home for two months as Lisa Marie would sit with the body.
She told Winfrey that her mother brought in a tattoo artist to get a matching tattoo, but she did not have a picture so she took the tattooist to the coffin, which Keough described as “definitely one of the most absurd moments”.
“The moment my brother died I was like ‘this is the end of her’… I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” Keough said, describing the close bond her brother and mother had.
“I felt grateful because I felt like I was on borrowed time with her.
“She would say ‘I am going to die of a broken heart’ and I think we all felt that, my sisters and I knew that that was sort of coming.”
Keough was five when her mother married Thriller singer Jackson.
“I remember how much she loved him, she really was obsessed with him… she just adored him,” she said.
“I can only speak to my experience with Michael, and my experience was he was only kind and loving to me and my family, and I saw them in a very seemingly happy, loving relationship.
“I think that our version of normal was probably a little bit different, but I think for me in my life it felt very normal. A lot of the time they would stay at our house instead of Neverland.
“It was kind of like waking up, going into their room and they would take me into school – there was a sense of normalcy there, there were extraordinary elements as well.”
From Here To The Great Unknown was published on Tuesday in Ireland and the UK.
