“Priscilla” star Cailee Spaeny on spending “precious moments” with the first lady of rock ‘n’ roll and connecting with her “nerd” colleague Jacob Elordi

When Cailee Spaeny was 13 years old, she was at a crossroads: she could carry on as before or withdraw from a normal life forever. Maybe she couldn’t drop out of high school to become an actress, she knew that, but Spaeny chose the hard way; the exciting and risky. And that was the decision that the teenager Priscilla Presley made in 1963 when she left her family in Germany to live with Elvis in his house. Graceland, under the protective care of the singer’s father, Vernon. This is how Spain was cast for “Sofia Coppola”. PriscillaPerhaps the two women, actress and subject, had more in common than they knew.

“We were the same age when we had the belief, ‘Well, this is my life and I want it and I’m a teenager, but…'” says Spaeny. “Like Priscilla’s family, my family has made incredible sacrifices to support this decision. And you don’t just have to be good to yourself, but you also have to make sure you don’t let them down.”

At their first meeting in a Los Angeles restaurant, Presley told Spaeny, “I would have found a way to get to Graceland to be with Elvis, whether they would have helped me or not.” Spaeny says, “I probably would have done the same thing if my parents hadn’t helped me come to LA. I would have found someone, jumped in their car and made it happen. I stood by this decision . I grew up very quickly and started earning an income for my family at a young age. It wasn’t exactly sweet: ‘I’ll try it.’ It was like, ‘I have to make this work’.”

When casting Priscilla, Coppola was looking for someone who could act from age 14 to his late 20s, and Spaeny was assisted by Coppola’s muse, Kirsten Dunst, who worked with the young actor on Alex’s Garland’s upcoming film. Civil war – Spaeny’s second time with Garland after starring in his Hulu series developer.

“I think she just saw something in me and Jacob and pulled the trigger,” says Spaeny. There was no chemistry between Jacob Elordi, who was supposed to play Elvis. “The thing about Sofia is that when she knows what she wants, she really goes for it and trusts her feelings.”

Spaeny emailed Elordi and together they bonded over their love of film. “The first night we met, we went to see Gilda, the film directed by Rita Hayworth that eventually became one of Sofia’s references. Then we just hung out. We were in London at the same time and became very close. I quickly learned that he approaches the roles in the same way that I do. Actually, we’re just two nerds. We handle these things very intensively. We hardly hung out during filming because we were so immersed in it.”

Then there were the meetings with Presley himself. “She is a woman from another generation,” says Spaeny. “She carries herself so differently. She still dresses so elegantly, and my favorite clothes are jeans and a t-shirt, and my voice range is there. I am a girl of a different age. She is royal. She holds it back.”

Presley was gentle and somewhat shy, says Spaeny. But she was also fiercely protective of her family and their history. “If I misunderstood something about the way I perceived it, she would say, ‘What do you mean?’ No, that’s not true, that’s not it.’ But she will do it in a friendly way.”

Sometimes the two women talked only about dogs. “I mean, we ended up talking for four hours and then we started talking about her time with Elvis and there were wonderful details in the story that, coming from the woman herself, were like gold. It was very special and her eyes lit up as if she was with him and laughing at a joke he was telling. It was truly these precious moments that I will always carry with me.”

Spaeny understood the delicate nature of the material and its deeply personal narrative in Presley’s book Me and Elvis. And she has a connection to Presley’s experience of first love, she says. “I think the emotional journey she went through is probably ten times bigger than anything I went through because it was there for the whole world to see, but [it’s about] I’m just falling in love for the first time and doing everything I can to capture that feeling. When you are so young, when you fall in love like this, you don’t know who you are at first. When then [your partner] say, “I like this type of woman,” or, “I prefer this.” I know from personal experience that I definitely said, ‘Well, I don’t know who I am anyway, so I might as well be because I’m in love.’ You want to persevere.”

Spaeny not only read everything she could, but also studied every photo she could find and watched every film. “I watched her interviews after she published the book. I even looked at them Naked weapon Films I laughed at with her.” With Leslie Nielsen Naked weapon Movies showed that Priscilla had good comic timing and a surprisingly bold sense of humor. “I thought, ‘I can’t pin you!’ You are so interesting.’ And she thought it was funny.”

Spaeny and Elordi also studied the home movies the Presleys made. “They were really great for Jakob and me.” Her on the tour bus or her on the beach vacation with him, and they really looked like two children in love. All the glitz and glamor was gone and they were just rolling around in the sand, or she was hanging out with the boys and the boys were playing catch with each other right next to the tour bus. It was really something special. Or there’s a great one of hers where Elvis threw her a 21st birthday surprise, which is so sweet.”

There was one study that became her favorite reference. “I memorized it as a monologue and said it over and over. It was the only recording I had of her that was closest to when I played her, so I just listened to that because she has a different vocal range than I do. It’s much higher, much more airy, and so I played it over and over in my head just to have it as an entry point to a scene.

Presley’s story reveals some uncomfortable truths: her astonishing youth when she and Elvis met – she was 14, he was 24; a gruesome scene in a Las Vegas motel when Elvis aggressively pins Priscilla to the bed; a scene in the studio in which he angrily throws something at her, and more generally his infidelity and his oppressive expectations of his wife. How did Spain come to this problem?

“There are definitely some shocking details in there… I mean, if you had to summarize the most shocking moments in their relationship in a minute, it sounds like one thing, but then she’s so candid in the way she tells the story tell , and It’s complicated and in a gray area, but I think if you were actually there and in her shoes, every decision she made along the way would be completely understandable.

“It’s a very difficult story that we’re telling and I think we’ve done our best to humanize it and just put the facts on the screen. I’m really proud of how Sofia and we all tried to handle it with grace, care and consideration.”

At the film’s premiere in Venice, Elordi was between Presley and a very worried Spain, who felt like she was going to faint with fear. She tried to tell herself that she would survive, no matter what Presley thought of her actions. But when the lights came on, Presley turned to her. “It was a great achievement,” she said. “I saw my life through you.”