Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” has earned critical acclaim for artfully pulling back the curtain on the title character’s life with superstar Elvis Presley. However, it has also been met with some criticism over Elvis’ portrayal in the film, which shows the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (played by Jacob Elordi) being abusive toward Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny).
In conversation with Richard Curtis at London’s BFI Southbank on Saturday, Coppola opened up about finding the right balance in her depiction of Elvis after the audience watched a scene in which he violently begins packing Priscilla’s bags after she discovers a love note from another woman.
“I really tried not to make it black-and-white. I really tried not to make him the villain,” Coppola said. “But that scene was the harshest one, it was really hard to do that. We only did a few takes. I couldn’t see her being treated in that cruel way. But it’s a love story to her and it had a lot of highs and lows, so I tried to balance it so that it had exciting times and dark times.”
Coppola based her screenplay on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” as well as her own conversations with Priscilla. She said it was important to her to keep the film as true to Priscilla’s experience as possible.
“It’s all based on how she describes her life in the book. I was really surprised that she expressed all that in the book and no one seemed to notice,” Coppola continued. “Like, no one seems to know about her story, we don’t know that much about her. Just for her to be so young — their relationship power dynamics were already complicated, but then to be so much younger and he could just send her away if she didn’t like something. She was in a really hard position, I thought, and the fact that she got through that and had the strength to leave and make her own life and wasn’t beaten down by that, I think that’s really impressive.”
The film’s critics included Priscilla and Elvis’ late daughter Lisa Marie, who Variety revealed penned emails to Coppola before her death in January in which she called the script “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous.”
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” Lisa Marie wrote in one of the emails. “As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”
However, the film was made with the full support of Priscilla and got rave reviews for showing a different side of her love story with Elvis. Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman named “Priscilla” a Critic’s Pick, writing that the film is “the tale of how the ebullient, soft-voiced rock ‘n’ roll idol who Priscilla thought she was falling in love with evolved into a pathological personality, though maybe he always was. The dramatic question that drives ‘Priscilla’ is: Are we seeing a deeply flawed and ultimately wounding relationship? Or are we seeing a vibrantly innocent young woman give herself over to a mirage?”