Preparing to play one of the most iconic couples in music history comes with a fair amount of pressure, as Priscilla’s lead Cailee Spaeny knows all too well. Add to this the tight shooting schedules and limited budget of Sofia Coppola’s biopic charting Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s marriage, and the challenge only grows.
As a result, Spaeny tells 12DOVE, she went to some unusual lengths with her co-star Jacob Elordi to make sure she was ready in the months leading to filming. "When I found out that Jacob was doing it, I got in touch with him right away over email and said, 'I'm so keen to work with you. If you are open to it, I'd love to meet' and he was," she explains of that preparation period.
"It was important for me, and I found out that he agreed thankfully, that we just had to feel comfortable around each other and just had to rip the band-aid off and be like, 'You're my friend now, you have no choice.'"
Thankfully too, the pair are equally diligent in their preparation for roles, which meant Spaeny was able to suggest some more unique ways to get into character. "I put together a list of movies that Elvis and Priscilla watched together," she recalls. "I went over to his place and his mom was around and she was cooking and we put on the movie. I scheduled a horseback riding day for us because Elvis and Priscilla loved horses. So it was a bit nerdy of me but I was like, 'If you're down, I'd love to do this.' So by the time we got on set, we really had that rapport going."
She’s adamant that this was necessary too as Priscilla shot on a tight budget with a very speedy 30-day filming period. "We were shooting it so out of order and sometimes we jump into these really intense, intimate scenes, and I don't think if we would have met on day one, it just really wouldn't have worked," she recalls, adding of Elordi: "I just really adore him and think he's such a good person and a fantastic actor who I really look up to in a lot of ways."
Spaeny says she also owes a lot of her performance, which has created a fair bit of Oscar buzz, to her director Coppola. As the director of Marie Antoinette, The Virgin Suicides, and Lost in Translation, she’s known for her atmospheric and visually stunning filmmaking, as well as her depiction of feminine interior life.
"When I found her films when I was 14 years old, I think the thing that sort of struck me was how honest she is in the depiction of young women," Spaeny tells GR+. "She doesn't underestimate them in terms of their wants and needs and longings and the dark sides of them, and the complexities. You just don't really get the chance to see teens depicted in that way. They're definitely underestimated, I think, and then also usually get played by 30-year-olds."
She adds: "That was what was so important to me as a young woman coming across her films and I think this movie slots right into that filmography of work in the way that it doesn't sort of shy away from the uncomfortable side of this story and also really gives [Priscilla] a chance as a young woman to see her side of the story being told."
Priscilla is out in the US now and in UK cinemas on January 1, with special 35mm previews on December 26. For more upcoming movies, check out our guide to 2024 movie release dates.
