Cailee Spaeny on Becoming ‘Priscilla’: How the Breakout Star Channeled the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll
variety.comAngelique Jackson Priscilla Beaulieu was a 14-year-old Army brat when she met the world’s biggest star, Elvis Presley, sparking a love story that’s the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll legend.
When “Priscilla” star Cailee Spaeny was 14, she developed a different kind of crush — a cinematic one — on Sofia Coppola. It all started when she watched “The Virgin Suicides,” Coppola’s 1999 feature directorial debut. “It just sort of cracked me open,” Spaeny tells Variety. “It was the first time I asked myself who was behind the camera.” So, it was surreal when, a decade later, Spaeny got a call from her reps telling her to get on a plane because “Sofia wants to have coffee with you in New York.” At the meeting, Spaeny tried to play it cool while eating croissants with her idol. “All my childhood dreams were coming true,” the actor recalls. “Then she pulled out her iPad, and she started showing me photos of Priscilla Presley.
That was sort of shocking.” Coppola was searching for an actress who could play Priscilla from age 14 to 29 because, like Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” she aimed to tell the tale chronologically, beginning with the couple’s first meeting in 1959 when Elvis (played by Jacob Elordi) was stationed in Germany.
The A24 movie — which opens nationwide on Nov. 3 – captures the highs and lows of their lengthy courtship, as well as their 1967 Las Vegas wedding, the birth of their daughter Lisa-Marie and their 1973 divorce.
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