Surprise! Priscilla Presley joins Riley Keough to talk Lisa Marie at Graceland

MEMPHIS − “Laughing and crying and also sometimes a sitcom − a good old-fashioned family sitcom.”

When Nicole Richie spoke those words Saturday night onstage at Graceland, she was offering an appreciative, plainspoken summary of “From Here to the Great Unknown,” the new memoir co-written by the late Lisa Marie Presley and Presley’s daughter, Riley Keough.

But that mini-review also might be a description of the Richie-hosted event itself, a sometimes tearful and sometimes comedic public conversation between Richie and Keough that became especially raucous after the women were joined by a surprise guest: Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie’s mother and Keough’s grandmother.

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Lamenting her daughter's mid-1990s marriage to Michael Jackson, Priscilla asked Riley: "Did you like Michael?" "I did," Keough replied. "You did?" Priscilla responded. "I was ... 6," Keough said.

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Billed by Elvis Presley Enterprises as a "celebration" of the new memoir (an Oprah's Book Club selection), the event at the Soundstage at Graceland attracted a sold-out crowd of some 1,600 Presley fans, each of whom paid $40 for a ticket to the event and a Keough-autographed copy of the book.

License plates in the parking lot denoted the presence of fans from Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois, Alabama, and on and on.

Sitting center stage of the venue, Maria Samaniego of Bakersfield, California, said she was inspired to make her overdue first trip to Elvis’ home by the opportunity to hear Keough talk about life as a Presley. “It was my dream to see Graceland,” said Samaniego, 62.

When Priscilla Presley made her unbilled appearance about 45 minutes into the hour-long talk, the crowd went wild, but perhaps nobody was more thrilled than Samaniego: "I named my daughter Priscilla," she said.

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The participation of Keough's friend Richie also had not been advertised. The women sat in easy chairs, angled slightly toward each other, with a small table containing bottles of Mountain Valley spring water.

Richie, 43, making her first visit to Memphis, proved a conscientious interviewer and a savvy reader of the memoir, praising Keough for writing with "a level of empathy I have rarely seen between a child and a parent," and delving deep into the book's examination of "grief," as felt by Lisa Marie (whose father, Elvis, died at 42) and Riley (whose mother, Lisa Marie, died at 54).

“I don’t know what closure is,” said Keough, 35, speaking of her grief over her mother’s death in 2023. “I don’t really understand ‘closure,’ in this context.

“People keep saying, like, wow, your family, there’s so much tragedy. … It’s actually a very common story,” Keough said, noting that many families have members who have struggled with addiction or died at a young age.

At one point, Keough looked up and said: “Nicole's crying − I’m supposed to be the one crying."

Keough said Lisa Marie always loved Graceland, because “even though she did lose her father here, I think that she felt a sense of freedom here and actually a sense of closeness to him here. … It’s always been a place that’s emotionally complicated because there’s so much joy and closeness here but also there’s loss, as well. … But I think that’s the experience for a lot of people who come here.”

Priscilla Presley − who also spoke Thursday at a national Rotary Club conference in Memphis − said "Lisa" loved coming to Graceland as a child because "I wasn't here," to apply discipline. "She didn't go to bed until 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock in the morning. ... She didn't want to brush her teeth, she didn't brush her teeth. ... She ran Graceland."

Describing herself as "a very proud grandmother," Presley, 79, pooh-poohed reports of a rivalry between her and Keough over control of the Graceland estate (Keough is now the owner of the house and grounds). "All the papers that you have read that we’re battling it out, we can’t stand each other … that is not true," said Presley, who moved to Graceland when she was 17 and was married to Elvis from 1967 to 1973. "All those rag magazines, they're making money off of all of these lies."

The tabloids would have paid big money in the 1990s if Presley had been as candid in her disapproval of Lisa Marie's marriage to Michael Jackson as she was Saturday night.

Presley said she was unhappy when Lisa Marie met "you-know-who − Michael Jackson. … She said, what’s wrong with you, why don’t you like him? I knew he was a big Elvis fan, I knew why he wanted to marry her. … Sure enough, when they got married, she hardly saw him. … She would call me up and say, ‘Michael hasn’t been home for four days, I don’t know where he is.’ ” 

When Lisa Marie told Priscilla she planned to divorce Jackson, Priscilla was overjoyed. “So that was No. 2, got rid of,” she said, referring to Lisa Marie’s four husbands. 

However, she and Riley Keough agreed that No. 1, Danny Keough (Riley’s father), was not just a wonderful dad but a loyal and supportive person. Even after the divorce, he remained Lisa Marie Presley’s best friend, Keough said.