Health and Fitness: Riley Keough opens up about welcoming her daughter through surrogacy ‘Felt Like the Best Choice’

Riley Keough is speaking out for the first time about her choice to use a surrogate to welcome her daughter.mThe Daisy Jones & The Six star 34, discussed the decision following the arrival of her baby girl in the September issue of Vanity Fair. “I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff,” Keough, who has Lyme disease, tells the publication.

The actress and Vanity Fair cover star reveals in the interview that she and husband Ben Smith-Petersen welcomed their daughter “via surrogate” in August 2022. Keough also shares the poignant name of their baby girl, which is rooted in a classic family connection.

“This is Tupelo,” she announces, which is the Mississippi birthplace of her grandfather Elvis Presley.

“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” Keough continues, referring to the 2022 film directed by Baz Luhrmann. “I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something. Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no’, but it’s fine.”

Keough adds that her daughter’s middle name Storm was also given in tribute to her late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, who died by suicide in 2020 at age 27.

In the months since becoming a new mom, Keough also lost her mother Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January. Lisa-Marie had attended the 2022 Golden Globes with her daughter two days prior to her death, it was reported at the time.

“We had dinner,” Keough recalls of the last time she saw her mom. “That was the last time I saw her. I remember thinking about how beautiful she looked, and that was my strongest memory of the dinner.”

“When I lost my brother, there was no road map whatsoever, and it was a lot of big emotions that I didn’t know what to do with,” she tells Vanity Fair. “When I lost my mom, I was familiar with the process a little bit more, and I found working to be really helpful.”

“I find it triggering when people say happiness is a choice, but in that moment, I did feel like there was a choice in front of me to give up and let this event take me out or have the courage to work through it,” Keough adds. “I started trying to move through it and not let it take me out.”

Keough’s latest interview comes after she was officially named the sole trustee of her late mother’s estate, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, following a legal dispute with her grandmother Priscilla Presley.

Vanity Fair’s September issue, on newsstands August 15.