Priscilla Presley has never been one to stay silent when it comes to her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. In her new memoir, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, she opens up about her strained feelings toward Lisa Marie Presley’s whirlwind marriage to Michael Jackson. Nearly 30 years later, Priscilla is revealing what she really thought of the relationship, and the details aren’t flattering.
When Lisa Marie first told her mother she planned to marry the pop superstar, Priscilla admitted she was “appalled.” She confessed that she even asked her daughter if the romance was physical because, like many others, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Lisa Marie assured her it was.
“I knew in my bones that Michael wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie; he was marrying the Presley dynasty,’ she wrote in her memoir,” according to the Daily Mail. “Michael was a manipulative man, and I think he had his sights set on her long before she realized it,” she wrote.
“The childlike innocence he projected was part of his public mask,” she added.
Still, Priscilla wasn’t convinced Michael Jackson’s intentions were pure. She wrote that she felt in her gut the King of Pop wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie out of love but because of the Presley name. In her words, he was marrying the dynasty, not the woman.
Michael Jackson Accused Of Hidden Agenda
Priscilla painted Michael as far from innocent. She claimed he reached out to Lisa Marie during his child abuse scandal and described him as a “manipulative” figure who used charm and childlike innocence as a mask. She went as far as to say Michael had his sights on her daughter long before she realized it.
Priscilla Presley also recalled Lisa Marie telling her Michael wanted a baby. Priscilla begged her to wait, fearing her daughter was being pressured into something she wasn’t ready for. Within two years, the marriage crumbled, leaving Priscilla relieved it was over.
Lisa Marie’s side of the story has surfaced in her own posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown. She claimed Michael told her he was still a virgin when they first dated, and that their physical relationship began only after he made the first move. Despite her shock, she admitted he didn’t want to wait until marriage to consummate things.
Their romance ended quickly, with Lisa Marie filing for divorce in the late ’90s. Michael went on to marry Debbie Rowe, fathering Prince and Paris, while later welcoming his third child, Bigi, via surrogate. Lisa Marie, meanwhile, raised her four children, including actress Riley Keough.
“Sad really, let her, your daughter, rest in peace,” one reader states.
“It’s ironic that Priscilla would call anyone manipulative in a book written to counteract the last words of her dead daughter,” another snips.”
“Okay – this woman divorced Elvis and grifted off his name for years. Now she’s going to grift off her dead daughter and dead ex-son-in-law. Makes sense,” states one more.
Priscilla Presley’s new revelations reopen old wounds, casting Michael Jackson in a manipulative light and questioning the authenticity of his marriage to Lisa Marie. But with both stars now gone, what really happened behind closed doors may never be fully known. Was it a love story overshadowed by fame? Or a calculated move by the King of Pop to protect his image?
Nina Franklin 
Sabrina Russell 
