Portraying a living character who also happened to have once been married to Elvis Presley was about as intimidating an assignment for Cailee Spaeny as you might imagine. She plays Priscilla Presley in the A24 biopic “Priscilla” from director Sofia Coppola that opened wide in theaters on November 3. Interacting with the real-life woman she was playing before shooting on the film began was “a massive weight on my shoulders,” she recalls in our exclusive video interview above. “Countless nights I was staying up late trying to figure out what line to tow and how to tell this story, and really making sure I was being sensitive to her.”
Spaeny discusses having had two extended in-person meetings with Presley along with a handful of phone calls and several texts prior to production beginning. Spaeny remembers, “And she said, ‘I just want to make sure that the love is there between us.’ And we do show the lows, but we try to show the highs as well.”
“Priscilla” is based in large part on Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” following her life beginning when she met Elvis (played in the film by Jacob Elordi) as a young teen in 1959 and taking the audience through her leaving him along with their four-year-old daughter Lisa Marie in 1972. It shows a smitten King of Rock and Roll courting a shy adolescent who is blown away by his attention at a time when he’s the biggest entertainer in the world and women are falling at his feet.
Spaeny (who is permitted to promote the film during the actors strike due to A24’s interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA) spoke about the film’s whirlwind 30-day shooting schedule. “We shot it wildly out of order,” she says. “We were shooting the end of the movie on day two, and I was also pregnant in the morning and 14 years old after lunch.” Given the rapid production, it often felt to Spaeny that she was jumping out of an airplane and metaphorically relying on the parachute to guide her. In this case, the chute was her hair, makeup and costumes that she leaned on heavily to anchor her performance. “I had to make subtle differentiations between the ages physically and also where (Priscilla) was emotionally, and it was the costume and the hair and the makeup that really were the pieces that kept me aligned and on track and where I was in the day.”
It also greatly helped the actress to have a great working relationship with her co-star Elordi, who cuts a strikingly handsome figure as Elvis. “I think what Jacob does (with the character) is really touching and complex,” she believes. “We really see this boy and his struggle with fame and how that affects both of them. And it was important for us to have a rapport before we started filming. Sometimes it’s fine to meet on day one and roll right into a scene, but for this one I think we had to have some level of trust beforehand. We met up, did some fun activities and got to know each other…Jacob was just an actor who I felt like I could always lean on. He was always going to bring an idea to the table. He’s the real deal. I can’t wait to see what he does next.”
Nothing, however, fully prepared Spaeny for here experience seeing the movie for the first time at the Venice Film Festival on September 4. It was quite a scene, with a massive red carpet and bright lights and press cameras and screaming fans. It was overwhelming. All of that, and the real Priscilla Presley was also there. “I wasn’t going to watch the movie actually,” she admits. “I was going to slip out because I’d already made the decision it was too weird. But then I turned to Sofia right before we went in and I said, ‘What do you think I should do?’ And she said, ‘I think this moment is too special for you to miss. I think you should watch it and you should be proud.’ And so, I did.”
But then Spaeny was seated right beside the real-life Priscilla.
“I had Jacob there as a buffer,” she recalls, “but it was still so…I mean, I was white-knuckling it the whole time. I thought I was going to pass out. But then it was very rewarding at the end to have the response that we did from the audience.” That response was a seven-minute standing ovation. “And then Priscilla turned to me and said she liked my performance.” And then, as the cherry atop the sundae, Spaeny was awarded the Volpi Cup as the Best Actress of the festival. “It really couldn’t have gone any better,” she acknowledges. “It was amazing.”
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