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Journalism of Courage
While growing up in Tennessee, young Cailee Spaeny remembers accompanying her parents on road trips to Graceland, Memphis, Elvis Presley’s famous estate where he breathed his last. With speakers blaring out Elvis’s songs, her dad was moved to tears, making Spaeny realise the kind of impact the rock-and-roll superstar had on America. However, it is while preparing to play the role of Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s former wife, that the actor learnt about his life away from his popular persona.
In Sofia Coppola-directed Priscilla, a faithful adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me (1985), Spaeny plays the titular protagonist. “I found Priscilla’s story and all the things that she went through touching. I felt an enormous amount of pressure to get it right. We were telling the story that represented her life and I could imagine no one better than Sofia who could tell this story,” says Spaeny. She received the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in Priscilla, which is currently streaming on MUBI. It was also screened at the Habitat International Film Festival, Delhi, on Saturday.
Priscilla’s story has long been overshadowed by the immense fame that Elvis enjoyed. The movie, which re-examines “one of history’s most complicated love stories”, follows the life of Priscilla Beaulieu when she was only 14 and living in West Germany in the late 1950s and receives an invitation to a party with Elvis (Jacob Elordi), who was then serving the US Air Force. Brought closer by mutual attraction and loneliness, theirs was a long courtship, which later unfolded in the sprawling Graceland and was followed by a turbulent marriage.
The memoir was Spaeny’s “touchstone” while preparing for the role. “Priscilla tells the story candidly with lots of detail. It was useful to hold on to that. I also sat down with Priscilla herself. She was kind enough to take out the time and go through certain moments of her life. That was a huge part of my preparation and putting this puzzle together. It was incredible to sit down in front of her and take in who she is and how she holds herself,” says the 25-year-old actor. Though the initial days of their romance was dreamy, the narrative subsequently captures young Priscilla’s isolated life in the sprawling Graceland.
Since there is not much footage of Priscilla with Elvis available, Spaeny also had to rely on Coppola’s vision to essay the character. One of the challenges for Spaeny was to play Priscilla at different stages of her life. “Since I am not a mother, I had to lean on Sofia for how motherhood changes you emotionally,” says the Pacific Rim: Uprising actor and adds that “hair, make-up and costumes” too helped her in putting together her performance. “We had such an amazing hair, make-up and costume department. These were so essential in those moments of anchoring me and grounding me,” she says. Priscilla was famous for her attention-grabbing beehive and winged eyeliner.
The film was shot in 30 days. There were days when Spaeny, in the morning, shot a scene in which Priscilla was pregnant, and later in the day faced the camera as the 14-year-old who was in love with Elvis. “It was the costumes that reminded me of where I was in the story. I needed to hold on to my look to remind me how I was going to play this arc,” she says. Talking about her performance, Coppola had stated, “Cailee is so expressive and has an incredible ability to move between different stages of life.”
What Spaeny found most touching about her role was the strength that Priscilla found within her when she was 24 and decided to end their marriage. “Even though she was married to someone as famous as Elvis, Priscilla decided that she wanted more and a life of her own. That’s inspirational.”
