Priscilla Presley: Lisa Marie’s Death ‘Separated’ Our Family

Priscilla Presley has opened up about the quiet but real distance that’s grown between her and her family in the three years since losing her daughter Lisa Marie Presley — and the conversation got complicated fast.

Speaking at a public event at the Westgate in Las Vegas on May 2, alongside her son Navarone Garibaldi, the 80-year-old actress reflected on how Lisa Marie’s sudden death in January 2023 reshaped the family’s rhythm. “It’s kind of separated us in a way,” Priscilla said. “You know, we would get together and have meals and have family.”

She pointed specifically to Lisa Marie’s youngest daughters, twins Harper and Finley Lockwood — whom the late singer shared with ex-husband Michael Lockwood — as an example of how life has naturally pulled everyone apart. “The girls are 18 now, the twins,” Priscilla said. “So they have their boyfriends and, you know, do their thing.” She was quick to add that despite the distance, they’re still “close” — but before she could finish the thought, Navarone stepped in with a different read on the timeline.

Navarone Says the Fractures Started With Benjamin

“I think actually losing Ben was the first thing that separated us,” Navarone, 39, said, referring to Benjamin Keough, Lisa Marie’s son with her first husband Danny Keough, who died by suicide in July 2020 at age 27. “When you would think that should be something that would bring everyone together, that somehow separated us further because everyone grieves in different ways.”

He didn’t sugarcoat it. “Everybody put blame on somebody in different ways, and just felt different ways about it. Somehow, that separated us further.”

It’s a raw and honest thing to say publicly — and it tracks with something Lisa Marie herself wrote just months before her own death. In an essay she shared with People for National Grief Awareness Day in August 2022, she described the isolation that can follow a devastating loss: “Your old ‘friends’ and even your family can and will run for the hills,” she wrote. “The unrelenting reality is that you are FORCED into this horrendous ‘club,’ if you will, that you never wanted to be in or a part of.” She said she’d come to cherish “the few who have stayed in there with us throughout this entire nightmare.”

At the time, few could have imagined that Lisa Marie herself would be gone just five months later.

A Family Finding Its Way Back

For all the grief and distance, Navarone ended on something closer to hope. He said that in the wake of Lisa Marie’s death, the family is “coming closer together” and “letting go of those feelings.” It’s a silver lining that sounds hard-won.

Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023, from a small bowel obstruction — a complication from bariatric surgery. She was 54. Just days before, she and Priscilla had attended the 80th Golden Globe Awards together, where Austin Butler won Best Actor for his role in Elvis, the Baz Luhrmann biopic that both women had championed publicly.

After Lisa Marie’s death, the family’s grief became entangled with legal conflict. Priscilla contested the validity of a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie’s will that had removed her as trustee of the Graceland estate and replaced her with Riley Keough and Benjamin. The dispute eventually settled — Riley, now 36, was named sole trustee of Graceland in August 2023 after agreeing to pay Priscilla $1 million plus $400,000 in legal fees.

“When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives,” Riley told Vanity Fair at the time. “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. There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was.”

Priscilla, for her part, said at the time that “Elvis would be proud” of the settlement, and that “Lisa’s wishes are what are most important to all of us.”

Riley — who has two young children with husband Ben Smith-Petersen and recently starred in Daisy Jones and the Six — has largely stepped into the role of family anchor since her mother’s passing. And while the Presleys have never been a family that does things simply, there’s something in Navarone’s words that suggests they’re at least moving in the same direction again.