Riley Keough suggests feud with Priscilla Presley was media invention: “She’s just been my grandma”

Despite the runaway success of Prime Video’s ‘70s rocker Daisy Jones And The Six—and an Emmy nod to boot—the past few years have been incredibly tough for Riley Keough. After losing her brother, Benjamin, to suicide in 2020, Keough also had to bury her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, after she died earlier this year from complications of bariatric surgery.

Both descendants of Elvis Presley were laid to rest at Graceland—the family’s Memphis, Tennessee estate—which Keough officially took sole ownership of earlier this week.

Riley’s status as the home’s singular trustee (in addition to her mother’s estate) did not come without even more familial heartache. For the better part of a year, Keough has been embroiled in a legal battle with her grandmother (and Elvis’ ex-wife) Priscilla Presley; a battle that the press made out to be bitter and contentious. Just a few weeks after her daughter’s death, Priscilla publicly contested a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie’s will that named Riley and Benjamin co-trustees of her estate (including Graceland, now valued at around $500 million), replacing Priscilla and former business manager Barry Siegel.

Keough and Presley finally settled last Friday. For her status as sole inheritor, Riley has reportedly agreed to pay Priscilla $1 million, plus an additional $400 thousand in legal fees. Still, despite everything that’s happened in the past few months, things between the two are “happy”—or at least they “will be,” Keough told Vanity Fair in a profile published Tuesday.

While the actor further clarified that things have “never not been happy” between her and her grandmother, it sounds like their relationship—as one might expect—is still a little complicated. “I’m trying to think of a way to answer it that’s not a 20-minute conversation,” she said before continuing: “There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was. She’s a beautiful woman, and she was a huge part of creating my grandfather’s legacy and Graceland. It’s very important to her.”

“Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy. That’s her whole life,” she went on. “None of that stuff has really ever been a part of our relationship prior. She’s just been my grandma.”

Keough also clarified that—despite conflicting rumors—Priscilla can absolutely be buried in the estate’s meditation garden alongside her former husband and the rest of the family. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t be buried at Graceland,” she said. “I don’t understand what the drama in the news was about. Yeah. If she wants to be, of course. Sharing Graceland with the world was her idea from the start.”

For Keough, however, the estate has lost a great deal of the luster it once held. “I always had positive and beautiful memories and association with Graceland,” she said. “Now, a lot of my family’s buried there, so it’s a place of great sadness at this point in my life.”