Priscilla Presley is 'nervous' for people to see her Elvis movie. It all traces back to two scenes.

The life and love-life of Priscilla Presley is set to be chronicled in Sofia Coppola's first film in three years, Priscilla. 

The hotly-anticipated movie will premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2023. Unlike Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic Elvis, Coppola's take will focus on a teenage Priscilla Beaulieu.  

“I heard Baz was making a movie about Elvis,” Coppola said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I was like, ‘That’s OK. That’s even better, in a way, that people are looking at his story.’ He’s so much in the culture always, but even more so now. It’s interesting, then, to look at Priscilla’s perspective.” 

A24's Priscilla will be markedly different to the Disney-fied version of Elvis which Luhrmann sold to fans. 

Starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Australia's Jacob Elordi as Elvis, the movie begins as Priscilla meets Elvis Presley at the height of his superstardom.

At the time, Priscilla was 14 and Elvis was 24, and they first met a party in West Germany in September 1959. The chance encounter came after Elvis had been drafted into the U.S. Army in 1958 as an attempt to rehabilitate his public image. 

Elvis and Priscilla got married in 1967 when she was 21 years old. Elvis died in 1977 and Priscilla and Elvis’ only child, Lisa Marie, died suddenly at age 54 in January 2023. 

Elvis Presley with bride, the former Priscilla Beaulieu. Image: Getty. 

The new movie's script is adapted from Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me, which is something that has raised concerns for Priscilla.

“I’m so nervous because it’s my life,” Priscilla told THR. “The people who are watching, they’re living it with you, and you hope and pray that they get it. They get your feelings, your hurts, your sensitivity.”

More specifically, the movie includes scenes that under a contemporary lens look disturbing and inappropriate at best and at worst, abusive. In one moment in the movie, Elvis is seen picking out clothes for a teenage Priscilla. 

This is something Priscilla has spoken about before. She told People in 1985. "Something in his Southern upbringing had taught him that the 'right' girl was to be saved for marriage. I was that girl. At the same time, he molded me into his woman. I wore the clothes, hairstyle and makeup of his careful choosing."

Fast-forward to 2023, Priscilla admits “It was a different time,” she reflected in the new interview. 

“I lived in his world. I wanted to please him. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to have fun with him. I wanted to see what it was that he liked.”

Even more egregious, there's another scene in the film when Priscilla is given a black eye by Elvis during a pillow fight. 

In Elvis and Me, she spoke about a time in the 1960s when the couple took drugs and ended up in a pillow fight. After whacking Elvis with a pillow, she recalled Elvis' eyes "flashing with anger". 

He screamed at her, "Goddamn it! Not so rough. I don’t want to play with a goddamn man!"

She then recalled "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." 

As she fled the room to tend to her wounds which included a swollen black eye and bruise on her arm, Elvis allegedly yelled, "You're not a goddamn man!"

Watch the teaser for Priscilla here. Post continues after video. 

The young age of Priscilla at the time she started dating Elvis is another issue the film can't shy away from. In the 1985 interview with People, she recalled the moment Elvis first spoke to her, asking her "Well, what have we here? What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?" 

After informing Elvis she was in the ninth grade, he reportedly laughed and said, "Why, you're just a baby."

The pair met again at another gathering where Elvis invited Priscilla upstairs to a bedroom, assuring her, "I swear I'll never do anything to harm you. I'll treat you just like a sister," she told People. 

Coppola is well-versed in writing the stories of young women, with the director previously drawn to girlhood narrative of films The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring. 

Since raising her daughters Romy (aka viral TikTok nepo baby) and Cosima, Coppola has discovered a new perspective as a mother of two adolescent girls.

“Now I can see the mother’s point of view also,” Coppola said. “And I see all these teen-girl objects in my house that look like set dressing from one of my movies. In my life, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, now I’m the villain character.’ That’s new. I can’t believe that.”

Coppola was captivated by Priscilla's story and hopes to capture the "mystique" around her early years with the King of Rock. 

“Her story was so vivid in my mind and the visuals of that world, Memphis, the ’60s. It’s so American,” Coppola said. 

“I always like themes about finding one’s identity and teenage girls growing into adulthood.”

Feature image: Getty.