'An Evening with Priscilla Presley': Live stories from the King of Rock and Roll's Queen

When "The Virgin Suicides" and "Marie Antoinette" director Sofia Coppola reached out to Priscilla Presley asking permission to make a movie about her 1985 memoir "Elvis and Me," Presley admits she was nervous.

It wasn't the first time that the Presleys' relationship would be depicted in film.

Beginning just two years after his death, with the release of "Elvis" in 1979, to Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" in 2022, parts of their story have been shown on the silver screen time and time again. Although Presley adored some of the portraits of her ex-husband, she was worried that another one wouldn't get it quite right.

But after a few meetings and phone calls of Coppola asking the right questions and treating the matter with much-needed sensitivity, Presley trusted the director with her story.

"When someone wants to do (a movie of) your life, you just hope that they get it right. You hope they get you, you hope there’s no other intentions, you hope they can live it with you, and that’s one thing I really felt about Sofia," said Presley. "She saw a deeper side, it was serious, meaning that she really wanted to dive in and get it right.”

One of the biggest factors that contributed to the successful portrayal of her story, said Presley, was Coppola's vision for the film as a woman — the first woman to direct a film about Elvis and Priscilla.

“To have a man do (a film of) your life, it’s quite a bit different from how a woman would see it because she lives it with you," said Presley. "Sofia really got me, she got Elvis, and I thought she did a great job. I don’t think a man could’ve done as great a job as she did, because, you know, how could a man live a woman’s life?”

Throughout the making of the film, Coppola and lead actress Cailee Spaeny, who plays Priscilla in the film, conferred back to their inspiration time and again to expose the harsh truths of Priscilla and Elvis' relationship, while also illustrating the unending affection between the two.

"It is a love story. When someone is doing your story, you just want them to see the side that was there," said Presley. "I never stopped loving Elvis Presley. Never. I love him to this day. He was an amazing human being, he was a caring human being. I left because I just couldn’t live the lifestyle anymore, but we still remained close until the end."

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Now on a short tour in support of the movie, with an upcoming stop at Detroit's Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts on March 10, Presley wants to offer more people an inside look at "the entertainer, the singer, and the human being" that Elvis was.

At An Evening with Priscilla Presley fans of all ages can sit down to listen as the King's Queen tells personal stories of the past, shares never-before-seen home video footage of the pair, and answers audience questions during a live Q&A session.

Looking back at past public appearances, Presley says one of her favorite things is seeing the younger generations that filter through the doors, sometimes modeled after her in retro 60s fashion with colorful cocktail swing dresses and bouffant hair, and others styled after Elvis himself.

"I have young boys coming dressed like Elvis. It goes from about five years old to maybe 12 years old, coming wearing jumpsuits. It puts a big smile on my face, and I think, ‘I wonder what Elvis would think if he saw this. Would he believe that these young kids are dressing like him and are interested in him and try to act like him?' It’s really, really something," said Presley.

After decades of being known as Elvis' wife, Priscilla Presley is still eager to answer questions about the late King of Rock and Roll.

“The children of women who loved Elvis now love Elvis and want to know more about him. I enjoy meeting new people, especially the young ones, and answering their questions," said Presley. “That’s something that I don’t think he ever would have imagined: still being asked about so many years after he passed. Elvis thought that people would forget him after he passed … if he only knew.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Priscilla Presley to stop in Detroit for storytelling, Q&A with fans