Riley Keough has opened up about her memories of her mother Lisa Marie Presley’s marriage to Michael Jackson.
Presley and Jackson were married between 1994 and 1996, after she separated from Keough’s father, Danny Keough. Before the marriage, Jackson was facing allegations of abuse and assault towards children.
Speaking on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the actor and filmmaker responded to a question from host Alex Cooper about the allegations, and whether any adults in her life at the time had been concerned about her spending time with Jackson.
Keough said: “I was never told anything. And it’s actually not something I ever asked as an adult. It just was what it was. I don’t know, it just never came to mind.”
Though she didn’t know for sure, Keough “would imagine that my dad was really heartbroken, reading the news. And I would imagine he said all kinds of things to my mom that we didn’t know about.”
She continued, referring to her and her brother Benjamin, who passed away in 2020: “The way my parents parented was very much ‘We don’t fight around the kids, we don’t ever say anything around them’. We didn’t know anything. We didn’t know about any allegations. We had no awareness of that.”
When asked how she feels about that part of her life now, Keough paused, before saying: “The one thing I know is that they were in love, and that their love for one another was genuine, because I was there and I remember. Everything else, I don’t know, because I wasn’t there.”
Jackson was accused of sexually abusing minors throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, but was never convicted. He died in 2009, aged 50.
Keough also shared some other memories from that time, including reflecting more generally on how her life changed when her mother married Jackson.
She said: “Our life wasn’t crazier because that was already there. That already existed, like the press and the crazy, the paparazzi, but … I think when she saw Michael’s life, there were things that he had that she didn’t have.
“She didn’t have a plane at the time or things like that, and so she then was like, ‘Oh, I should have a plane and I should have this and that,’ and so our life in that way kind of got bigger because before that, she was with my dad and their life was very simple. Not with the press and the craziness, but in terms of at home. She didn’t have 10 million assistants and she didn’t need all of that, and I think that changed.”
Presley passed away in January 2023 at the age of 54. Keough worked to finish the memoir she had started with her mother, titled From Here To The Great Unknown, by listening to hours of tapes that Presley had recorded during the writing process. Her death caused a dispute between Keough and grandmother Priscilla Presley about her estate, which they have since settled.