Elvis' granddaughter dismisses idea of Presley 'curse'

Riley Keough doesn't think there is a "curse" on her famous family.

The 35-year-old actress is the granddaughter of late rock and roll legend Elvis Presley - who died in 1977 aged 42 - and after her mother Lisa Marie Presley passed away in January 2023 aged 54, has insisted that her "dream" for the future is that there will not be any "addiction struggles" within the family.

Speaking live on stage at the Jerry Moss Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday on the last stop of her book tour, she said: "... The word 'curse' is used because my family are looked at as this not-real mythology or something, but really it's just very common things, like addiction."

"Everyone in here has loved somebody with addiction issues or has lost somebody tragically.

"I mean, the hope is that the future generations of our family aren't going to struggle so much with addiction. Of course, that's the dream."

Lisa Marie - who was married to Danny Keough from 1988 until 1995 - died following a sudden cardiac arrest, and in 2020 her son Benjamin took his own life at 27.

The Daisy Jones And The Six star is now the sole heir of the Graceland estate left behind by her grandfather following an intense legal battle with her grandmother Priscilla Presley and noted that she was "very involved" in the proceedings before her mother passed, and it was only the "attention" that was new to her.

She said: "There was a lot of attention on it and me, but prior to that, it was something I was very involved in.

"And my mom was very … if there were things with the estate, whatever we were, I was very involved in it already. So it wasn't like, 'Whoa, what is this new thing?' My mom would come to me with everything.

"So there was that awareness and it was something that I was familiar with. That wasn't a new thing basically, I would say - but I'd say the attention on it was new."