Riley Keough recalls the last time she saw mom Lisa Marie Presley and 'how beautiful she looked'

Riley Keough is remembering the final time she saw her mother, the late Lisa Marie Presley.

In a new Vanity Fair cover story, the Daisy Jones and the Six star said she last spent time with Presley at a party for Baz Luhrmann's biopic Elvis in January, one day after the Golden Globes. Presley died two days later at 54, from complications of a small bowel obstruction.

"We had dinner," Keough recalled. "That was the last time I saw her. I remember thinking about how beautiful she looked, and that was my strongest memory of the dinner."

Keough, whose brother Benjamin died at 27 in 2020, explained that she's "been through a great deal of pain" in the wake of both family tragedies. "Parts of me have died and I've felt like my heart has exploded," she said. "But I also feel… I'm trying to think of how to phrase this… I have strengthened the qualities that have come about through adversity."

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Riley Keough and Lisa Marie Presley in 2017

She summarized her mother's legacy by calling her a "really one of a kind" person who was both "strong" and "just so unapologetically herself in every circumstance." Keough added, "She was a very powerful presence and extremely loving and extremely loyal and sort of a lioness — a fierce woman, and a really wonderful mother. I think that would be my summary because I'm her daughter. She was the best mom."

In processing her grief, Keough found it helpful to focus on her career. "I find it triggering when people say happiness is a choice," she said. "But in that moment, I did feel like there was a choice in front of me to give up and let this event take me out or have the courage to work through it. I started trying to move through it and not let it take me out."

The actress also addressed her recent settlement with her grandmother Priscilla Presley over her late mother's estate, which was resolved in May. According to Vanity Fair, Keough agreed to pay her grandmother $1 million, as well as $400,000 in legal fees, in order to remain the sole beneficiary of the estate, which includes Elvis Presley's historic home Graceland as well as Elvis Presley Enterprises.

"When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives," Keough said. "Everything felt like the carpet had been ripped out and the floor had melted from under us. Everyone was in a bit of a panic to understand how we move forward, and it just took a minute to understand the details of the situation, because it's complicated. We are a family, but there's also a huge business side of our family. So I think that there was clarity that needed to be had."

Although they went through "a bit of an upheaval," Keough maintained that there was no love lost between the family members. "She's a beautiful woman," Keough said of her grandmother, "and she was a huge part of creating my grandfather's legacy and Graceland. It's very important to her. He was the love of her life. Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy. That's her whole life."

Keough did acknowledge, however, that the merging of business and family affairs was strange territory for the pair. "None of that stuff has really ever been a part of our relationship prior," she said. "She's just been my grandma."

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