Riley Keough shares rare pictures of her daughter, named after late grandfather Elvis Presley and brother Benjamin
The Daisy Jones & the Six actress welcomed her first daughter with husband Ben Smith-Petersen through surrogacy in August 2022. With a tense, months-long legal battle against her grandmother Priscilla Presley finally behind her, Riley Keough is ready to open up about her family like never before, and she’s finally revealing her baby daughter’s name!
The last year for the Daisy Jones & the Six actress has been full of tumult, between her mom Lisa Marie Presley’s sudden death in January, the legal battle over her estate, unexpectedly moving to a rental home to be closer to her twin sisters Harper and Finley, adjusting to her first year as a mom, and now finally, peace and normalcy.
The star is ready to open up about it all, and did so in a new interview with Vanity Fair, our August 8.
Fans first learned Riley had privately welcomed a baby girl at her mom’s funeral in Graceland, when her husband Ben Smith-Petersen read a eulogy on her behalf which in part read: “I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters.”
Now she’s ready to share more of her with the world, starting with her name: Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen.
The sweet name honors two of the most significant men in her life. First and foremost, her grandfather Elvis Presley, Tupelo being the late King of Rock’s birthplace in Mississippi.
“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” she explained, referring to the Baz Luhrmann biopic that premiered a month before her daughter’s birth.
She noted: “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,” before joking: “Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.”
Her daughter’s middle name is Storm, in honor of her late brother Benjamin Storm Keough, who died of suicide aged 27 in July 2020. Riley also has his name tattooed on her clavicle.
Riley welcomed her daughter via surrogacy, and told the outlet of the process: “I think it’s a very cool, selfless, and incredible act that these women do to help other people. I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff.”
She said her daughter is the spitting image of her husband Ben, joking: “She’s literally like someone shrunk my husband and that’s our baby,” though she told VF when it comes to her iconic red hair, she can already see herself at the very least in her daughter’s growing curls.
These days, Riley is finally feeling a sense of normalcy and settling in, just as her daughter celebrates her first birthday in August. After spending some months “stuck” renting an “unassuming ’70s tract house” in Calabasas to be close to her sisters, now she has settled into a more private home.
Though she said it still isn’t her ideal forever home, she maintained: “But I love suburbia,” adding: “This is my dream: normalcy. I’m happy out here.”
