Priscilla Presley ‘appalled’ by Lisa Marie Presley’s marriage to Michael Jackson
In her upcoming memoir, Priscilla Presley admits she was “appalled” when her daughter Lisa Marie Presley revealed she was marrying Michael Jackson.
Priscilla Presley was “appalled” when her daughter Lisa Marie Presley revealed she was marrying Michael Jackson.
The 80-year-old, who was married to Elvis Presley from 1967 to 1973, has used her upcoming memoir to recall how she questioned both Lisa and Michael’s relationship and their sex life.
She makes the admissions in Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, due for release on 23 September, with excerpts obtained by The Sun showing Priscilla described how Lisa Marie confided in her about her romance with the singer during the mid-1990s, before their eventual divorce in 1996.
Priscilla wrote: “I was appalled by the marriage. I asked her if they had a physical relationship. Like so many people, I wasn’t sure. She said, ‘Yeah’.”
She added she believed Michael, who was 36 at the time of the wedding, had married her daughter for reasons tied to her family name rather than love.
Priscilla said: “I knew in my bones that Michael wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie; he was marrying the Presley dynasty.”
She claimed Michael was seeking “good publicity” as he faced allegations of child sexual abuse in the early 1990s, charges he always denied.
Priscilla wrote: “Michael was a manipulative man, and I think he had his sights set on her long before she realized it. The childlike innocence he projected was part of his public mask.”
Lisa Marie, who died in 2023 at the age of 54, gave her own account of the relationship in her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, compiled by her daughter Riley Keough.
She wrote Michael told her he was a virgin when they began dating.
Lisa Marie revealed: “He told me he was still a virgin. I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened.”
Lisa Marie added: “The physical stuff started happening, which I was shocked at. I had thought that maybe we wouldn’t do anything until we got married, but he said, ‘I’m not waiting!’”
Michael went on to marry Debbie Rowe, with whom he had two children – Prince, 28, and Paris, 27 – before welcoming son Bigi, 23, via a surrogate.
He died in 2009 aged 50 from a propofol overdose.
Lisa Marie was already mother to Riley Keough and her son Ben, who died in 2020 aged 27, from her marriage to Danny Keough.
She later had twin daughters Harper and Finley with her fourth husband Michael Lockwood.
