When Cailee Spaeny won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the last Venice Film Festival, there were many who imagined that Priscilla, the eighth film by Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, was going to be one of the contenders in the race for the Oscar. And although the talented 25-year-old protagonist also earned a Golden Globe nomination, the film was completely left out of the Hollywood Academy’s shortlist. That does not detract from this portrait of a teenager who manages to make the dream of many of getting to know her idol up close come true, showing throughout the story that not everything in this apparent fairy tale was rosy.
Why did you want to tell the story of Priscilla Presley?
I simply read his memoir, but I never imagined it would move me so much. I realized I didn’t know much about her. I felt very connected to the way she described everything that happened, from when she was a simple high school student to when she became an independent woman after experiencing very special circumstances. I didn’t know she was still going to high school while she lived at Graceland. That’s how I got into the American world of the 1960s.
Why do you think it took so long after the book was published for her to get her movie?
I think things happen when people are ready. It seems to me that this is a time in our culture when there is more interest in women’s stories. I was surprised how little we knew about her. He is one half of one of the most famous couples of his time. Knowing everything we know about him, it’s very interesting to see what things were like for her being next to her.
What was the biggest challenge in creating a believable character taking what was in the book?
I think the biggest challenge was taking such an important part of a person’s life and boiling it down to its essence to fit it into the length of a film. It was not easy to make the audience understand everything she experienced in just two hours.
How did your conversations with Cailee help you portray Priscilla?
It was very important, because we had to film this movie jumping all the time to different moments in the story. What Cailee did was truly impressive. When she arrived on set, I knew where we were in the story by the way she looked. And at the time of editing, I realized that she was always very clear about where she was and she had managed to create a very gradual transformation. When filming, we simply concentrated on the scene we were doing, and we had all the sets in the same sound box, the teenage bedroom was next to the dining room set, and sometimes we had to go from one place to the other although they were scenes that were going to appear at different times in the film. It was like a puzzle.
Your film doesn’t show Elvis as a villain, but as someone who certainly had his problems…
Yes, for me it was very important to maintain Priscilla’s perspective of him in her book. She shows him as a human being, beyond the fact that in popular culture he is perceived as a god. In the book she tells what he was like, his vulnerabilities, and his way of being in private. I found it very interesting to show the good and bad moments that she lived through, without leaving aside the incredible charm that Elvis had as well as the darker facets of him. For me it was key that it was seen that they had a complex relationship. I didn’t want him to be a villain, but a human being with his conflicts and problems.
Did you learn anything from your previous films that you were able to use in the filming of Priscilla?
I have learned to trust my intuition and not forget what interests me about a project, because you cannot assume who is going to respond or feel connected to your work. You simply have to listen to yourself and trust that if it connected with you, it will also connect with other people. When I started I wasn’t so sure about that, and now, that I’ve been doing it for a while, I feel like intuition is telling me what the right decisions are in what I’m doing.
Do you feel there are some commonalities between Priscilla and Lost in Translation?
It’s not something I’ve thought about but it makes sense. I am always interested in the relationship between fantasy and reality of what seems to be ideal but is not. I understand very well how fame works. Having grown up in the industry, it’s something I know very well. I have a much more realistic view of what it can be. As for this story, seen from the outside it seems like a fairy tale. And then when you hear all the problems Priscilla had to deal with, you realize it’s not what she imagined. She had a seemingly ideal life but in reality she was plagued with ups and downs and she had to deal with many situations. In our culture there is the idea that fame and fortune make you happy, and the reality is that all that comes with many other things that are not so pleasant.
Did you film anything at Graceland?
No, we built all the sets in Toronto. I’m impressed that people think we film in the real places. We have a fabulous art department. The designer, Tamara Deverell, created it all, and we couldn’t have made this movie without her ingenuity.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
For me the most important thing is that Priscilla did not deceive herself. At first glance she had a perfect life, but it wasn’t the right one for her. On the surface, she was in an ideal relationship, but she gave it all up in the early 1970s when it was very difficult to leave a very powerful man without having an income of her own. She had the strength to search for her own identity by distancing herself from Elvis. I think what the movie is saying is that it’s never too late to find out who you are.
