Subhi Agrawal
Since August 2023, the 35-year-old Daisy Jones & the Six actress has been the sole trustee of her late mother Lisa Marie Presley’s estate and the owner of her grandfather Elvis Presley’s iconic mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
Riley Focuses on Preserving Graceland
“My hope is to continue what my grandmother [Priscilla Presley] did, and then my mother did, which is simply to preserve our family home,”Riley shared with PEOPLE through email for this week’s cover story.
Keough also oversees the sub-trusts for her 15-year-old sisters, Finley and Harper Lockwood, who are the daughters of Lisa Marie from her marriage to Michael Lockwood, which lasted from 2006 to 2021.
This week’s PEOPLE cover story features the first excerpt from Lisa Marie’s memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown. Riley Keough completed the memoir after her mother passed away at 54 in 2023 due to a small-bowel obstruction following bariatric surgery she had several years earlier.
To finish the memoir, which she had promised her mother to help write before her passing, Riley listened to tapes of memories recorded by Lisa Marie.
“Because my mother was Elvis Presley’s daughter, she was constantly talked about, argued over and dissected,” Riley said.
“What she wanted to do in her memoir, and what I hope I’ve done in finishing it for her, is to go beneath the magazine headline idea of her and reveal the core of who she was. To turn her into a three-dimensional human being: the best mother, a wild child, a fierce friend, an underrated artist, frank, funny, traumatized, joyous, grieving — everything that she was throughout her remarkable life. I want to give voice to my mother in a way that eluded her while she was alive,” she added.
“She Knew How Much I Loved Her”
In the memoir, Lisa Marie discusses her father’s love, her struggles following his death, her romantic relationships, the healing power of motherhood, the heartbreaking loss of her son Benjamin in 2020, and the redemptive joy brought by her granddaughter, Riley’s 2-year-old daughter, Tupelo.
“The tapes are an incredible portrait of the force of nature that she was. Depending on the day and her mood, she can sound locked-in or distracted, vulnerable and open or annoyed and closed off, hopeful, angry, everything. You hear her in all her complications,” Riley said.
“There wasn’t much we didn’t discuss, and I know that she knew how much I loved her, just as I know how much she loved me and my brother and sisters. I don’t feel like she or I left anything unsaid, which I feel profoundly grateful for,” she added.
As Riley prepares for renewed public interest in her mother’s story, she looks forward to the day her daughter Tupelo, whom she shares with her husband Ben Smith-Petersen, can read the memoir.
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