Riley Keough Reflects on Famous Stepfathers Michael Jackson & Nicolas Cage

Riley Keough is looking back at her childhood and reflecting on having some “wild stepfathers” along the way.

The actress, of course, is the daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley and her ex-husband Danny Keough.

Following Presley and Keough’s split in 1994, Lisa Marie went on to marry Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage and Michael Lockwood.

After a quick divorce from Danny, Presley married MJ the same year. At the time, Jackson was in the midst of a child molestation case that was later settled.

In the September issue of Vanity Fair, Riley shares, "My whole childhood was probably very extreme. In hindsight, I can see how crazy these things would be to somebody from the outside. But when you're living in them, it's just your life and your family. You just remember the love, and I had real love for Michael.”

She said of Jackson, who died in 2009, "I think he really got a kick out of being able to make people happy, in the most epic way possible, which I think he and my grandfather had in common," referring to Elvis Presley.

When asked how Michael’s famous Neverland Ranch compared to her grandfather’s Graceland estate, she said, "Which one did I like better? I spent more time at Neverland than Graceland, to be honest. That was a real home, whereas Graceland was a museum in my lifetime."

By 1996, Lisa Marie had filed for divorce from Jackson, marrying Cage in 2002.

Presley and Cage were only married for four months before they split. Riley said she doesn’t keep in touch with the star, but she would work with him in the future. “He’s a great actor,” she said, adding, “I’ve had some wild stepfathers. Famous and not famous.”

Her mom’s most recent ex-husband was Lockwood. They married in 2006, and welcomed twins Finley and Harper in 2008. Presley and Lockwood split, however, in 2016 and ended up in a nasty divorce that lasted through 2021.

During the interview, Keough also reflected on losing her mom earlier this year due to complications of a small bowel obstruction. They had just lost Riley’s brother Benjamin in 2020 to suicide.

Keough shared, “When I lost my brother, there was no road map whatsoever, and it was a lot of big emotions that I didn’t know what to do with. When I lost my mom, I was familiar with the process a little bit more, and I found working to be really helpful. I find it triggering when people say happiness is a choice, 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.”

Following Lisa Marie’s death, Riley became the sole trustee of her mother’s estate and owner of Graceland, which caused a dust-up with her grandmother Priscilla Presley. Eventually, Riley agreed to pay her grandmother $1 million and $400,000 in legal fees as part of a settlement.

“When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives,” Keough says. “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.”

She added, “Clarity has been had.”

When asked if her grandmother is happy, she said, “Things with Grandma will be happy. They’ve never not been happy,” she said, pausing, then explaining, “I’m trying to think of a way to answer it that’s not a 20-minute conversation… There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was. She’s a beautiful woman, 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. So it’s a big responsibility she has tried to take on. None of that stuff has really ever been a part of our relationship prior. She’s just been my grandma.”

Keough also opened up about becoming a mother via surrogate and the special meaning behind her daughter’s name. More on that here.

Pick up the September issue of Vanity Fair on August 15.