Priscilla Presley calls Sofia Coppola “amazing”, discredits age gap between her and Elvis
In a new interview for the premiere of her Sofia Coppola-helmed biopic Priscilla at the Venice Film Festival, Priscilla Presley complimented the director and tried to explain the age difference between her and Elvis Presley at the start of their relationship.
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you, about your life, about your love,” Presley told the media. “Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework. We spoke a couple of times, and I really put everything out for her that I could.”
Presley also acknowledged the age gap between her and her husband when the pair first met. Priscilla was 14 when she met the then-24-year-old Elvis while he was stationed in West Germany during his military service in 1959.
“It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why,” she said. “And I really do think because I was more of a listener. Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany. His fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, which he never, ever got over.”
“And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection,” she claimed. “Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life. Not in numbers. That was the attraction.”
Presley denied that she and Elvis had engaged in sexual activities when they first met. In her book Elvis and Me, which was the source material for Coppola’s Priscilla, Presley claimed that she was still a virgin when she and Elvis married in 1967.
“People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ Not at all,” Presley claimed. “I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old.”
“We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship,” Priscilla said. “I don’t know why he put so much trust in me, but he did.”
Priscilla is set for an October 27th release.
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