Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter has spoken out about how her mum’s marriage to Michael Jackson impacted their family.
Riley Keough is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough, who were married from 1988 to 1994. The eldest grandchild of Elvis, she has followed in her family’s footsteps in becoming an actor, known for roles in TV shows and films like Daisy Jones & the Six, The Girlfriend Experience and American Honey.
Following her split from Danny, Lisa Marie was married to the ‘Thriller’ singer from 1994 to 1996.
And during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Riley reflected on those two years with Jackson as her stepdad.
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“Our life wasn’t crazier because that was already there. That already existed, like the press and the crazy, the paparazzi and, you know, all that,” she explained.
“But ... I think when [Lisa Marie Presley] saw Michael’s life, there were things that he had that she didn’t have. She didn’t have a plane at the time, or things like that.”
Riley recalled how it made her mum think she ‘should have a plane’ and other things, meaning their life ‘in that way kind of got bigger.'
“Before that, she was with my dad, and their life was very simple ... she didn’t have 10 million assistants. She didn’t need all of that, and I think that changed,” the actor added.
Riley was only about five-years-old when her mum married Jackson and when the marriage happened, it wasn’t long since the singer had first been investigated by police.
Jackson had been accused of sexual abuse by families of four kids, he denied the allegations and was later acquitted.
Riley said she was ‘never told anything’ about these accusations while the pair were married.
“I would imagine that my dad was really heartbroken and reading the news, and... I would imagine he said all kinds of things to my mum that we didn’t know about,” she told host Alix Earle.
“The way my parents parented was very much like, ‘We don’t fight around the kids. We don’t ever say anything around them.’ We didn’t know about any allegations. We had no awareness of that.”
Lisa Marie died in January 2023 and Riley completed her memoir for her, From Here to the Great Unknown, which was released in October 2024.
Topics: Celebrity, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Sex and Relationships, Parenting
Jess Battison