Riley Keough has opened up about how her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, struggled to cope with the death of her son Benjamin in a new interview.
Keough – the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and star of Daisy Jones & The Six – sat down with Oprah Winfrey in a new CBS special, The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley, and shed light on how her mother struggled to cope with the loss of a family member.
Benjamin Keough was Riley’s brother and Lisa Marie’s son, who died by suicide in 2020. In the new interview around Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir, From Here To The Great Unknown, Riley has opened up about the unconventional ways that her mother helped process the grief.
“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” she recalled to Winfrey, also adding that her mother would claim that she was “going to die of a broken heart”.
“I knew this was the end of her. You know? I think I felt grateful, because I felt like I was on borrowed time,” she added, before reading a passage from the memoir. The excerpt saw Lisa Marie recall the immense similarities between Benjamin and his grandfather, Elvis Presley. This common ground included his appearance, his personality, and how close he was to her.
In the interview with Winfrey, Keough explained how her mother decided to preserve Benjamin’s body in her Los Angeles Mansion for two months using dry ice, until it was ready for burial. She also explained how she saw that Lisa Marie felt comforted when she was sat by the body.
“I think that the plan was to bury him here with her dad, and we weren’t going to come [to Graceland] for about three weeks,” Keough explained. “I think she just didn’t like the idea that he was far away. She didn’t know what was being done, and I think that she just wanted control over the situation given our family … and also just being a mother.”
Another way that Lisa Marie grieved for her late son was by getting a matching tattoo with Benjamin. This involved her inviting a tattoo artist to view Benjamin’s body so that they could get the placement right for Lisa Marie.
“I can see how this sounds completely insane and absurd. But my mom was just very much herself. She wasn’t a crazy lady,” Keough said. “[The tattoo artist], God bless him, was very normal about the whole thing, [but] It definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments.”
Lisa Marie Presley died at the age of 54 after an emergency admission to the hospital in January 2023.
While her death was initially thought to be caused by cardiac arrest, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office later confirmed that Presley died from a “sequelae of a small bowel obstruction”, or an intestinal obstruction that constricted blood supply to her digestive tract.
The memoir, which was released yesterday (October 8), was partially written by Presley and later finished by Riley Keough. Other topics covered include Lisa Marie’s childhood living in Graceland, and her time battling an addiction to opioids after giving birth.
To celebrate the release, Keough is set to embark on a book tour later this week, which will see her pay tribute to her mother. For the tour, she will also be joined by currently unnamed special guests at each of the tour stops.
The tour will take place across six dates in October, with stops in New York, Graceland, St. Louis, Nashville, London and Los Angeles. You can get tickets to the book tour here.
