Priscilla Presley broke down in tears as she explained her late daughter Lisa Marie was ‘suicidal’ months before her death.
Lisa Marie died earlier this year on January 12, aged 54, from the small bowel obstruction caused by previous weight-loss surgery – with opioids found in her blood at the time of her death.
Priscilla said Lisa Marie was still struggling with the loss of her son Benjamin Keough, who committed suicide in 2020.
During an appearance on TalkTV, which is set to air on Thursday, she told host Piers Morgan: ‘It was unbearable. I lost my mother, my grandson and my daughter.
‘Losing Ben was the hardest thing for her, he took his own life, he was the love of her life. She adored him, she would do anything for him.’
Emotional: Priscilla Presley broke down in tears as she explained her late daughter Lisa Marie was ‘suicidal’ months before her death
Tragic: Lisa Marie died on January 12 2023 aged 54 from the small bowel obstruction caused by previous weight-loss surgery – with opioids found in her blood at the time of her death
She continued: ‘We were sitting in Memphis in the suit, she said I don’t know if I want to be here. She would go on about ben and how she was still grieving, this was a couple of months.’
Priscilla previously revealed her late daughter Lisa Marie complained of her stomach ‘hurting really bad’ just days before her tragic death from a bowel obstruction.
Lisa’s final public appearance was at the Golden Globe Awards on January 10 – in which she sparked concern – with Priscilla detailing her final memories with her only daughter in an emotional interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
She said: ‘I did know there was something not right’ about the days preceding Lisa Marie’s death, recalling how the pair went to Chateau Marmont to celebrate Austin Butler’s win for his role as the music icon in movie Elvis.
Priscilla said: ‘We had just gotten there, you go down all these stairs. I tripped a little bit because I had these high heels on, and she started laughing so hard. I started laughing. We hadn’t even had a drink yet.
‘She goes, “Oh my God, Mom, you can’t even have a drink”… It was fun, a fun memory. Then we sat down and ordered drinks, and she says, “Mom, my stomach hurts really bad.” We immediately got up and left.’
Two days later Lisa Marie’s ex-husband Danny Keough called Priscilla to inform her the star had collapsed at home and was in the hospital – with Priscilla saying: ‘I got right in the car, but she was already gone. I still can’t believe it. I don’t wish this on any mother.’
She said: ‘It was unbearable. I lost my mother, I lost my grandson, and I lost my daughter. It’s still shocking that we don’t have her.’
Lisa Marie’s death sparked a dispute between her daughter Riley Keough, 34 and Priscilla over ownership of the estate.
In a recently-signed settlement Priscilla agreed – in exchange for $1.4 million plus an undisclosed sum for ten years – to relinquish control of her late daughter’s Promenade Trust, leaving Riley, star of TV’s Daisy Jones and the Six, as sole trustee.
During an appearance on TalkTV , she told host Piers Morgan : ‘It was unbearable. I lost my mother, my grandson and my daughter.’
The agreement between Priscilla and Riley settled a reported feud between the two sparked when, only two weeks after Lisa Marie’s death in January, Priscilla filed a legal challenge to her daughter’s will – which had taken control of her wealthy Promenade Trust away from Priscilla and given it to Riley.
In September, Riley said she and her grandmother’s relationship experienced ‘a bit of upheaval’ while they battled over the will.
The actress was left fighting her grandmother after she contested her daughter’s will – disputing a 2016 amendment removing her as co-trustee and naming Riley and her brother Benjamin, who has since died, instead.
Riley said in a cover interview with Vanity Fair magazine their relationship is now ‘happy’, but admitted Lisa Marie’s death caused a ‘lot of chaos’ in the family.
She said when asked about the issue: ‘I’m trying to think of a way to answer it that’s not a 20-minute conversation.
‘There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was. Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all (Priscilla) wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy.’
Riley added ‘things with Grandma will be happy’ now that ‘clarity has been had,’ noting that she and Priscilla had ‘never not been happy’.
She added about the fallout from Lisa Marie’s death: ‘Everything felt like the carpet had been ripped out and the floor had melted from under us.
‘Everyone was in a bit of a panic to understand how we move forward, and it just took a minute to understand the details of the situation, because it’s complicated.
‘We are a family, but there’s also a huge business side of our family.’
After a months-long dispute, Riley agreed to give her grandma $1 million to become the sole trustee, as well as $400,000 to cover legal fees.
Riley said: ‘I did feel like there was a choice in front of me to give up and let this event take me out or have the courage to work through it.
‘I started trying to move through it and not let it take me out.’
In June, Priscilla said Elvis and Lisa Marie would approve of the final settlement. ‘My daughter’s passing was both devastating and heartbreaking. We have learned that the fans realize that we are ‘Just a Family,’’ she wrote in a declaration.
‘Elvis would be proud and his and Lisa’s wishes are what are most important to all of us. My granddaughter, through her counsel, along with my team worked diligently and tirelessly to resolve all misunderstandings as a family.’
Elvis and Priscilla met for the first time in Germany in 1959 when he was 24 and serving in the army and she was just 14.
After he returned home to the US, they kept in touch via phone calls – before she eventually convinced her parents to let her move to Memphis, Tennessee full-time to be with him in 1963.
Priscilla spent eight years in a relationship with Elvis before they wed in a Las Vegas ceremony in 1967. The pair welcomed one daughter – Lisa Marie.
They divorced in 1973 over the Blue Suede Shoes hitmaker’s infidelities – with Elvis tragically dying just four years later aged 42 from a heart attack.
Last month an L.A. County Coroner report revealed Lisa Marie died from sequelae (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury) of small bowel obstruction.
The bowel obstruction was in the form of strangulated small bowel, caused by adhesions that developed after bariatric surgery (stomach stapling) many years prior.
The toxicology results also show Lisa had ‘therapeutic’ levels of Oxycodone in her blood, with a second opioid Buprenorphine – which is used to treat opioid dependence – also found.
There were also traces of Quetiapine, an antipsychotic drug, reported TMZ.
Tragedy: Lisa’s son Benjamin died by suicide in 2020 at age 27 (pictured 2015)
Struggle: Lisa Marie’s death sparked a dispute between her daughter Riley Keough, 34 and Priscilla over ownership of the estate (pictured together in June 2022)
The coroner states there was no ‘drug paraphernalia or narcotics’ found at her home and her urine toxicology screen was negative.
The report confirms Lisa had a cosmetic procedure a few months before her death and was prescribed opioids, with the star having a history of ‘overmedicating’ – forgetting she had taken her medication and then taking them again.
The reports also states the star had a ‘history of alcohol and drug abuse.’
Lisa Marie welcomed daughter Riley and son Benjamin with ex-husband Danny Keough – who she was married to from 1988 to 1994. Benjamin died by suicide in 2020 at age 27.
She welcomed twin daughters Harper and Finley in 2008 with then-husband Michael Lockwood, but the pair divorced in 2016.
Lisa Marie’s life was tumultuous, with five stints in rehab for cocaine and opioid abuse, four failed marriages – including one to Michael Jackson – as well as losing her son to suicide and a fierce custody battle over her twin girls with an ex-husband she falsely accused of having child pornography .
Sources told TMZ that Lisa Marie was found unresponsive in her bedroom by her housekeeper and that her ex-husband, Danny Keough, who she has been living with, performed CPR until paramedics arrived.
Lisa Marie was trying to lose weight for the Elvis awards season and was even taking opioids in the weeks before her death.
The star underwent plastic surgery two months before the Golden Globes and lost up to 50 pounds as part of a strict regimen.
Lisa Marie had previously struggled with an addiction to opioids after she was given a short-term prescription during her recovery from the birth of her twin daughters, Harper Vivienne and Finley in 2008.
By 2013, she was heavily abusing cocaine and checked into rehab at least five times.
She was believed to have been sober in recent years, but following her son’s death her ex-husband Michael Lockwood said he feared she could relapse.
As a teenager, she rebelled with drugs from the age of 13 to 17, but her mother put her into The Castle, a Scientology center in Hollywood, to get her off drugs.
‘I did everything but mushrooms and heroin or crack,’ she said.
‘Cocaine, sedatives, pot, and drinking — all at the same time… I don’t know how I lived through it.
‘I woke up one day with a bunch of people on the floor. I drove myself to the Church of Scientology and said: ‘Somebody… help me right now.’
For a time it worked, and Lisa Marie said she was drug-free from the age of 17.
Elsewhere in her TalkTV interview, Priscilla admitted she was wary of her son-in-law Michael Jackson during his two-year marriage to Lisa Marie and said she had an honest conversation with her daughter.
Priscilla recalled: ‘She said, “Mom, I’m really concerned,” this is while they were married, and she said, “I never see him. He is always gone.”
When she pressed her on where he goes to, Priscilla said that Lisa Marie admitted she didn’t know where he was and he would just call three or four days later.
Priscilla went on to discuss her fears over Michael’s interest in Elvis, saying: ‘I always felt that Michael Jackson loved Elvis, or respected Elvis, so I always felt that having the name, associated with the name with his daughter, I was concerned. I told her…’
When asked if she thought that was his main motivation for marrying Lisa Marie, she said that she did and added: ‘I never really got to know him’.
Piers then questioned if she would have preferred them not to have married, and she said: ‘Yes, just because I felt that he was so intrigued about Elvis.’, adding that he thought he was with her ‘because she was a Presley’.
The couple met when Lisa Marie was just a child and a lover of Michael’s music, but she wouldn’t become his lover until they reconnected nearly two decades later.
Many accused the couple of marrying to distract the world form the damning child molestation accusations against Michael. The couple always maintained their authenticity.
Lisa Marie was a Jackson 5 fan when she was a child, and at seven years old her father brought her back stage at one of Jackson’s concerts to meet Michael.
An employee of Michael’s told People magazine in 1994 that Lisa Marie ‘has known Michael almost all of her life, and they “stayed in touch”, after their first meeting.
Their friendship was rekindled in 1992 after they met again in LA. Lisa Marie was married at the time to the musician Danny Keough, who she had two children with.
In 1993 when Jackson was accused of molesting 13-year-old Jordan Chandler, he and Lisa Marie talked regularly on the phone and she became his support system throughout the investigation and its publicity.
During one of those phone calls, Michael reportedly asked Lisa Marie if she would marry him if he asked her to.
Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, wrote: ‘Michael valued Lisa’s settling effect on him, so much so that during his phone conversation, he posed a question that surprised both of them, ”If I asked you to marry me, would you do it?’ … Without missing a beat, she replied, “I would do it”.
Lisa Marie’s six-year marriage to Keough was falling apart at the time, and months later in May 1994 she and Michael jetted off to the Dominican Republic to escape the press and elope.
Lisa Marie filed for a quickie divorce from Keough, and she and Jackson were married in a fifteen minute ceremony. They both wore black, and Jackson donned a cowboy hat and bolo tie.
The pair kept their marriage secret throughout the summer as rumours swirled, until Lisa Marie finally confirmed it in a statement that August.
‘My married name is Mrs. Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson. My marriage to Michael Jackson took place in a private ceremony outside the United States weeks ago,’ she said.
‘I am very much in love with Michael. I dedicate my life to being his wife. I understand and support him. We both look forward to raising a family.’
A month later she and Jackson opened the MTV Video Music Awards together. Walking out on the stage hand-in-hand.
‘Welcome to the MTV Video Music Awards,’ he said. Then, waiting another moment for the applause to die down again, he said with a not to Lisa Marie, “I’m very happy to be here. Just think, nobody thought this would last.”
He then planted a bit lip-locking kiss on his wife and pulled her in close as the crowd went wild. They then walked off stage.
As the couple continued to make public appearances together across 1994 and into 1995, rumours began to swirl that they did not have sex.
They addressed the whispers in June of 1995 during an interviewed with Diane Sawyer.
‘Do we have sex?’ Lisa Marie said, and together she and Jackson exclaimed ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ They added that they intended to have children together.
Supportive: Both Priscilla and Lisa Marie attended the 80th Golden Globes two days before her death, in a show of support for the acclaimed Elvis (2022) biopic – Priscilla says Lisa Marie said ‘my stomach hurts really bad’ after they went for drinks on the night
Speaking out: Elsewhere in her TalkTV interview, Priscilla admitted she was wary of her son-in-law Michael Jackson during his two-year marriage to Lisa Marie (pictured in France in 1994)
Famous family: Lisa is seen as a baby with father Elvis Presley and mom Priscilla
As if to accentuate their sexual stance, a month later Michael released the music video for You Are Not Alone, which prominently featured him and Lisa Marie canoodling, dripping wet and in the nude.
Rumours about the state of their marriage continued to dog the couple throughout 1995, and finally came to fruition when they separated in December of that year.
A month later Lisa Marie filed for divorce, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’.
Nevertheless, the two tried to reconcile throughout the late 90s, with Lisa Marie traveling the world to be with Michael at times, and the pair occasionally being spotting together during his world tours.