Priscilla Presley is asking fans to “ignore the noise” amid ongoing tensions surrounding the trust of her late daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, whose father was the late Elvis Presley.
“I loved Elvis very much as he loved me. Lisa is a result of our love. For anyone to think anything differently would be a travesty of the family legacy and would be disrespectful of what Elvis left behind in his life,” the King of Rock and Roll’s widow, 77, told Page Six in a statement on Friday.
“There is an individual that bought their way into the family enterprise that is trying to speak on behalf of our family. This person is not a representative of Elvis or our family,” she went on, asking that the public allow her and her relatives “the time” they need “to work together and sort this out.”
Though Priscilla did not identify the “individual,” Joel Weinshanker — managing partner at Elvis Presley Enterprises — recently weighed in on the drama on Sirius XM’s Elvis Radio, saying that Lisa Marie was “quite certain” and “very direct” about who she wanted in control of her assets and legacy.
“We discussed this many, many times [before] she passed, and [it] was always Riley and Ben,” he said of her oldest children: daughter Riley Keough, 33, and son Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide in July 2020 at the age of 27.
“There was never a question in her mind that they would be the stewards, that they would look at it the exact same way that she did. And obviously, when Ben passed, it really sat with Riley.”
Priscilla concluded her cryptic statement by asking fans to “please ignore ‘the noise'” as she forges “a pathway forward with respect, honesty, dignity, integrity and love.”
She began the process of contesting her daughter’s will, which had eliminated her and her former business manager years ago, just days after Lisa Marie was laid to rest at Graceland — Elvis’ Memphis, Tenn., estate — next to Ben.
The singer-songwriter died on Jan. 12 at the age of 54 after going into cardiac arrest.
In court documents obtained by Page Six, Priscilla claimed Lisa Marie’s signature on a 2016 amendment appeared “inconsistent” and said her daughter’s name had been misspelled.
After the filing, a source close to Lisa Marie told us that Priscilla’s attempt to invalidate the will was merely a “money grab,” noting that the mother-daughter duo had “no relationship” at the time of Lisa Marie’s death.