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Eve Crosbie
- Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla" depicts the tumultuous relationship between Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
- The biopic is based on Priscilla's 1985 memoir "Elvis and Me," which she wrote with Sandra Harmon.
- Here are some of the things she wrote about Elvis' behavior in the book.
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Sofia Coppola's movie "Priscilla" offers a new perspective on one of pop culture's most iconic couples: Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
Starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and "Euphoria" actor Jacob Elordi as Elvis, the film charts the 14-year romance between the couple who first met in West Germany in 1959.
The couple separated in 1973 and just over a decade later, Priscilla shocked the world when she revealed intimate details from their relationship in her memoir she cowrote with Sandra Harmon, "Elvis and Me" — which serves as the basis of Coppola's film.
Unlike the Elvis seen in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic about the King of Rock 'n' Roll, the Elvis in "Priscilla," is portrayed as temperamental, controlling, and, at times, downright abusive.
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If you were curious about how much of the movie is based in reality, here's what Priscilla wrote about her tumultuous, troubling relationship with Elvis in the book.
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Priscilla recognized that there was a power imbalance between her and Elvis, and said that she began to see him almost as a God.
In the first chapter of her memoir, Priscilla wrote she understood that her 14-year relationship with Elvis — which began when she was 14 and he was 24 — was not necessarily healthy.
She wrote: "He taught me everything: how to dress, how to walk, how to apply makeup and wear my hair, how to behave, how to return love — his way. Over the years he became my father, husband, and very nearly God."
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Elvis molded Priscilla into his ideal of a perfect woman — and that included both her opinions and her looks.
During a trip to Las Vegas early on in their relationship, Elvis told Priscilla that he wanted her to dye her brunette hair a darker shade (to match his dyed black quiff which hid his natural blonde) and wear heavier eye makeup to make her blue eyes "stand out more."
Elsewhere, Priscilla wrote that Elvis also made it clear what colors she should and shouldn't wear.
"He liked me in red, blue, turquoise, emerald green, and black and white — the same colors he himself wore," she wrote, adding: "I was Elvis's doll, his own living doll, to fashion as he pleased."
"The more we were together the more I came to resemble him in every way. His tastes, his insecurities, his hang-ups — all became mine."
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Elvis wanted Priscilla to remain "untouched" before she married him, but was not faithful to her.
When Elvis returned to the US after serving time in the army, Priscilla said that he asked her to promise to stay "untouched, as I left you." He repeated this as she bid goodbye to him after her first visit to Graceland almost two years later.
All the while, Elvis continued his relationship with his previous girlfriend, Anita Wood (Priscilla wrote that she discovered Anita had been at Graceland and staying in Elvis' room the day before her first visit).
When Priscilla had permanently moved to Tennessee to finish her education there, she also recalled a moment when Elvis brazenly flirted with other women in front of her. Priscilla also pointed to several times that she turned a blind eye to evidence that Elvis had slept with other women.
Once, when Priscilla confronted Elvis about flirtatious comments he had made towards the girlfriend of one of his friends, she said that he lost his temper and said: "Look woman. No one tells me who I can look at and who I can't."
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Elvis told Priscilla, "It's either me or a career," when she landed a job as a model.
As the film depicts, Elvis was firmly against Priscilla pursuing her own career while she was with him. While still a teenager, she decided to accept a part-time modeling gig at a boutique in Memphis to earn a little cash of her own so she wouldn't have to ask Elvis or his father Vernon Presley for an allowance.
She wrote in her memoir that when she phoned Elvis to share her exciting news, he wasn't pleased. "You're gonna have to give it up," she recalled him telling her. "It's either me or a career, Baby. Because when I call you, I need you to be there."
It was only after she divorced Elvis that Priscilla began carving out a career for herself. In 1973, she set up a clothing boutique called Bis & Beau. Later, she moved into acting, appearing on "Dallas" and other television shows.
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Priscilla said she couldn't depend on Elvis when she was going through difficult periods.
Despite being asked to forgo a career so she was available to Elvis' every whim, she wrote that the expectation of unwavering support didn't extend both ways.
"If I was disturbed or depressed, or if I felt we were becoming distant and wanted to get closer by talking it out, he avoided me or told me my timing was bad," Priscilla wrote. "There was never a good time."
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Elvis was possessive and jealous when Priscilla developed friendships with other men at Graceland.
"Although I became friends with the guys in Elvis' retinue, he never let me, or anyone else, forget that I was his girl. I was never to get too close or become too familiar with any of the regulars," Priscilla wrote.
As an example, she described one evening when she left Elvis' bedroom to get something to eat and struck up a conversation in the kitchen with Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis' friends and business partners (who later became Lisa Marie Presley's manager).
Upon finding them speaking together, Elvis yelled, "What the hell are you two doing down here?" before ordering Priscilla to go back upstairs and "lashing out" at Jerry.
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Priscilla put her own needs second to Elvis' and her studies suffered as a result.
During her first few years at Graceland, Priscilla was burning the candles at both ends. Still enrolled at school, she would go to classes in the day before staying up late into the early hours of the morning, accompanying Elvis to movies and fairgrounds.
Describing this time in her life, she wrote: "Every free moment was devoted to cramming a whole semester's work into a few weeks. But my concentration was scatted; the strain of life at Graceland had finally caught up with me."
To help her pass her exams, Priscilla said that she, at Elvis' encouragement, started taking a co*cktail of prescription pills to "maintain the fast pace, and more importantly, to study for my final exams."
This was after she had a bad experience with sleeping pills that put her in a two-day sleep, as depicted in the Coppola film.
While she considered confiding in one of the nuns at her Catholic school about how much she was drowning under the weight of the pressure to get good gradesandbe there for Elvis, she ultimately chose not to.
Instead, Priscilla said she passed her exams by bribing a straight-A student to slide her test paper across so she could copy down answers.
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Priscilla was left with a swollen black eye and bruises on her arms after a pillow fight with Elvis.
Priscilla revealed in her book several instances when Elvis used his physical strength against her.
Both high on uppers, they had started a playful pillow fight which ended abruptly after the "Heartbreak Hotel" singer got angry at how hard Priscilla was hurling them at him.
"He grabbed my arm, throwing me on the bed, and while demonstrating how hard I had thrown the pillows, he accidentally hit me in the eye," she wrote. "I flung my head to the side and jumped up, accusing him of hitting me on purpose."
Priscilla wrote that, afterward, her arm was bruised where Elvis had grabbed her and her eye was swollen black and blue.
"To make matters worse — and to make sure he felt bad — I wore a patch over the bruised eyes. Everyone teased me, and Elvis joked, 'Couldn't help it. She tried to get rough with me. I had to show her who's boss.'"
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He also threw a chair at her in anger after she gave her opinion about one of his demos.
Like the pillow fight moment, this is also dramatized in the film in a way that is true to how Priscilla described it in her memoir.
Priscilla had joined Elvis and some of his associates in his office to listen to demo recordings for a new album.
When Elvis asked for her opinion on one of the songs, she decided to speak her mind and told Elvis she didn't like it very much.
"To my horror, a chair came hurtling toward me. I moved out of the way just in time, but there were stacks of records piled on it and one flew off and hit me in the face," she wrote. "Within seconds he had me in his arms, apologizing frantically."
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Elvis made threats and demanded Priscilla pack up her things and leave when she confronted him about his affairs.
Elvis' infidelity and the limitations of what Priscilla was able to accept come up in "Elvis and Me" several times.
She wrote that after Elvis' affair with his "Viva Las Vegas" costar Ann-Margaret, she discovered notes and cards from another woman that suggested that Elvis was cheating on her again.
When she decided to confront him about this, Elvis responded by essentially pulling the rug from under Priscilla's feet.
He threw her clothes out of her closet and demanded that she pack up her things and return to her parents in Germany.
Priscilla said she was left "humiliated" by Elvis' response and was "sobbing uncontrollably."
Elvis watched as she packed and it was only when she reached the door that he explained that she wasn't really being sent away.
Priscilla wrote: "I was relieved and happy to be back in his arms. Anything he'd have said would've made sense to me in that moment. What I didn't realize until later was that this was Elvis' technique of keeping me under control."
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At one point, Priscilla felt the only way to get Elvis' attention was by overdosing on pills.
After once again seeing Elvis shamelessly flirt with other women in front of her, Priscilla devised a plan "to create a dramatic effect that, in my mind, would win his attention."
That plan was to intentionally overdose on Placidyls — a sedative she and Elvis would regularly take to help them sleep.
"I swallowed the pills and started to prepare myself for the end. In tears, I thought of leaving him a note, writing down everything I'd never been able to say," Priscilla wrote.
It was only after she realized that Elvis hadn't noticed she was missing from the gathering that she abandoned her plan.
"The more I heard Elvis' laughter, the angrier I got. My adrenaline-charged fury was overriding the effect of the pills. Soon, I began to feel foolish."
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Priscilla said Elvis sexually assaulted her toward the end of their marriage.
Priscilla described the moment in Las Vegas when she was called up to Elvis' suite and found him lying in bed waiting for her.
The movie adaptation pulls its punches and shows Elvis storm off into another room after Priscilla turns down his advances, but in the memoir, she states that Elvis did force himself on her.
"He grabbed me and forcefully made love to me," she wrote of the encounter. "This was not the gentle, understanding man that I grew to love. He was under the influence, and with my personal growth and new realities he had become a stranger to me."
"It was uncomfortable and unlike any other time he'd ever made love to me before, and he explained, 'This is how a real man makes love to his woman.'"
The next day, Priscilla told Elvis something inconceivable to her just a few years earlier — she was leaving him.
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