Riley Keough Tells Oprah About Lisa Marie Presley’s Tough Last Years

Riley Keough sat down with Oprah Winfrey at her family’s estate, Graceland, for a one-hour CBS special devoted to discussion of the new book “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which Keough completed after her mother began dictating memories for a memoir before dying in 2022. Among the revelations that were arising Tuesday, with the release of the book and the prime-time event, were just how deep Lisa Marie Presley was into grief in her final two years, although she seemed to have overcome a drug addiction, even as her health failed.

Among the stories already being most talked about from the book — and discussed in detail in “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley” — is the extent to which Lisa Marie Presley literally did not want to let go of her cherished son, Ben, after he died by suicide in 2020.

As recounted in the special, Lisa Marie kept Ben’s body around for two months after he passed, unable to decide whether to have him buried at Graceland or Hawaii, but also feeling that she could better process her grief by having his presence remain in the house for an extended period, even in death.

“On paper, I could see how this sounds completely insane and absurd,” Keough said, “but my mom was just very much herself… You know, she wasn’t a crazy lady.” She compared her mother’s way of taking longer to process death as more akin to what happens in non-Western societies — while acknowledging that it seemed bizarre when she considered it through others’ eyes… which she had occasion to do when a visitor came to the house.

“It was about two months, and everybody in the house was in the grieving process,” Keough told Winfrey, who asked, “Can you explain how that can happen?” Said Keough, “She pulled some wild things off, but I think that the plan was to bury him here (at Graceland) with her dad. And we weren’t gonna come here for about three weeks. … She knew that the woman was gonna keep my brother at the funeral home, and I think she just didn’t like the idea that he was far away, and she didn’t know what was being done. And I think that she just wanted control over the situation, given our family and all of that, and also just being a mother… Basically, she found a very compassionate funeral home owner who was a mother, and she said, ‘Well, look, if you do all these things, you can keep him in a room. You just have to have somebody tend (to the body).” (In the book, Keough elaborates that room temperature had to be maintained at 55 degrees.)

Winfrey prompted Keough to recount the story of how they brought in a tattoo artist to get inked with names on their hands that would mirror the tattoos on Ben’s. Lisa Marie “really wanted the placement to be exactly right, and he’s like, ‘OK, do you have any photos?’ … And she was like, ‘No. But I can show you’,” leading him to the body in the next room. “I stayed quiet because it’s my mom and she does what she wants, but it was definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments, (yet) it was all very matter of fact. … God bless him, he was very normal about the whole thing… Then when he left, I was like, ‘Do you know how crazy that was?’” Queried Winfrey, “Can you imagine what that tattoo artist had to say to his family when he went home that night?” Keough cracked: “I’m sure he’ll write a book, at some point.”

Although both the host and subject had to briefly smile as the strange story was recounted, the subject of Lisa Marie’s extreme grief was treated with the utmost seriousness, with tape recordings being played back from her final months in which she spoke of having not wanted to go on living, “literally,” after the passing of Ben. Although Riley says she had a tight relationship with her mother, she says the bond her brother had with Lisa Marie was like the legendary one Elvis Presley had with his mother, Gladys.

As the new book reveals, Lisa Marie had not had any serious drug problem after her teenage years — until she had twins at 40, and then fell into a debilitating opiate addiction, taking drugs after having a C-section. Keough said that her mother did manage to go through rehab more than a decade later, and that she was proud of Lisa Marie for not seriously relapsing after the death of Ben. But in her last year, the combination of ongoing grief and having not taken care of her body created an ominous situation that left the daughter feeling her mother might not survive for long.

“The last sort of three weeks that she was alive, I was with her a few times that I felt worried,” Keough said. “I think there was always sort of an undertone for me because of this feeling that I was on borrowed time with her.” Keough said that the last time she saw her mother, “there was just something strange. I don’t know how to describe it. She just felt detached, tired.” Winfrey asked if Keough thought her mother was back on drugs. “It didn’t feel like drugs,” she said. “I have a lot of experience with the drugs. It felt like a tired person.”

There was at least some light in Lisa Marie’s last months as she sought a reason to forge on. “I think that her idea of her way forward was going to be through like grief work and helping other parents through grief. She would have these meetings at her house where she would put little snacks out for these families and have our grief counselor come and run these sort of grief circles. And she wanted to do a podcast. I think that it had to be about my brother if she was going to sort of find a new path for herself.”

There was less time spent on exploring Lisa Marie’s marriage to Michael Jackson, which is explored in considerably greater depth in the book. Keough did say that her mother was truly and madly in love with Jackson, before things went south some time into their marriage. “She really was obsessed with him. I remember when he would come to the house and she would run to her bathroom and put her makeup on and panic and want to get herself all dressed up for him. She just adored him. … I can only speak to my experience with Michael, and my experience was that he was only kind and loving to me and my family, and I saw them in a very seemingly happy, loving relationship. I think that probably our version of normal was a little bit different, but for me in my life, it felt very normal.” (In the book, addressing one oft-asked question, Lisa Marie says that Michael told her he was a virgin when they met, but that ended before they were wed.)

The special had its lighter moments, with Winfrey cheerfully announcing “Here we are!” as the crew arrived at Graceland, and sharing memories of how she and Lisa Marie called each other “cousin” after, in a visit back in 2006, the host shared the information that Presley was a family name on her maternal grandmother’s side.

Keough showed off artifacts like her mother’s key to one of the golf carts that she rode recklessly around Graceland as an adolescent, and the contents of the black box that Elvis Presley lugged around from place to place.

Winfrey asked Keough to share her fondest memory of her mother, and it was how much Lisa Marie wanted to watch over and cradle her granddaughter, Tupelo, when Riley became a mother two years ago.

“She was such a great mother, but she also was like particularly great with babies… Her instinct with babies was incredible. I think that if I can just make (Tupelo) feel loved, the way my mom made us feel loved — it was unconditional,” Keough said, “truly. And even when she was going through the tough times, the drugs … you know, we got in fights, as she did things that I did not approve of. We’d have awful interactions, as you do with someone on drugs. But the love was always there.”

Said Winfrey, “I know she’s gonna love the fact that you and I are together. Wherever she is, she’s going, ‘Thank you, cuz.’”