The Eery Truth About Elvis and Priscilla Presley's Relationship
The side of Elvis the world didn’t know.
With the recent release of the film Elvis, fans have been taking a trip down their fav’s memory lane. Unfortunately for some, one Twitter user came across a Barbara Walters interview with the late Elvis Presley’s former wife, Priscilla Presley.
The Twitter thread breaks down key components of the interview, all of which reveal eery truths about the former couple. In one clip, Priscilla discusses the early phases of their relationship and Walters asks “You were 14 years old, Elvis was 24 years old, how did your parents allow a 14-year-old… baby to be with this then, superstar?”
Priscilla appears to not understand the depths of what Walter was implying — that she was groomed. She said that she was rebellious and Elvis was “charming” and really won over the likes of her parents, even if it meant missing days of school to travel and see him.
“I don’t know what it was but he kinda took me under his arm,” she shared as she explained how the relationship was “very protective.”
At the age of 15 years old, Elvis urged her to move in with him in what became a pill-riddled life that her partner controlled. Walters asks her about being introduced to pills by Elvis and her eyesight drifts off. She scratches the side of her face and at one point says: “It was cold, and it was dark and it could get really lonely.”
Throughout the interview, Priscilla makes excuses for those around her with comments like “In my parent’s defense,” implying that she was the one in the wrong for wanting to date a superstar at the naive age of 14.
In all reality, these are all signs of a predatory, abusive partner grooming a younger person. For example, winning over the likes of a 14-year-olds parent, underage drug use and encouraging her to ditch school for his sole company. These signs are textbook, so much so that she even victim blames herself for others’ behaviors at several points throughout the conversation. In 1985, she actually shared in a feature for People: “He molded me into his woman. I wore the clothes, hairstyle and makeup of his careful choosing.”
The side of Elvis she knew was very different from the lively entertainer the world saw. He lived his life in a cocoon, as Priscilla called it, and where most women assumed she was enjoying the finest of life with her A-list partner, she was lonely, manipulated and isolated.
Listen to her story in the interview above.
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