Priscilla covers practically 15 years within the lifetime of its eponymous heroine, however with solely just a little greater than a month to shoot, there have been days on set by which the character was a wide-eyed teenager and a pregnant newlywed merely hours aside. For star Cailee Spaeny, this meant orienting her portrayal from one period to the following and again once more, again and again. In charting Priscilla Presley’s singular coming of age by means of her whirlwind, tabloid-captured romance with Elvis (performed by Jacob Elordi), the actor discovered her means in by understanding that the enduring costumes, hair, and make-up signified much more than simply her age. “She used vogue to inform her facet of the story, her journey by means of her years with him,” Spaeny says. “Elvis had guidelines when it comes to what he didn’t like Priscilla carrying and what he authorised of. She determined when to comply with the foundations—and when to interrupt them.”
It’s why the character matches so naturally into the oeuvre of writer-director Sofia Coppola, the Oscar winner having fun with among the finest essential and box-office responses of her profession. The disturbing actuality of Priscilla falling right into a 24-year-old Elvis’s orbit at simply 14 years outdated is acknowledged and offered plainly, however she and Spaeny make investments wholly in her private expertise—the dizzying, typically dreamy, typically crushingly lonely journey by means of Graceland, culminating in her resolution to hunt an impartial life. Spaeny got here to grasp that trajectory intimately, by means of the whole lot from Coppola’s perspective to Presley’s memoir (from which the script is customized) to the legendary images of the couple. Spaeny additionally spent a while along with her topic, gaining insights into the quirks of her character.
Sabrina Lantos
Naturally, then, Spaeny was most nervous about getting the pre-Elvis—that’s, pre-fame—Priscilla proper: an adolescent about to have her world turned the wrong way up. “It was so necessary for her to really feel that age,” Spaeny says. The collaboration with Coppola’s longtime costume designer Stacey Battat proved essential; they’d have lunch to debate explicit fittings and cutoffs on clothes, to speak by means of the concepts behind each look. There’s an harmless glow in Spaeny’s cautious, affecting efficiency right here. Within the scene the place we meet Priscilla, she wears a ‘50s poodle skirt and penny loafers, the ensemble saturated in delicate pinks. Her hair is in a cute ponytail. “I took artistic license there [because] I needed Cailee to look as younger as potential,” lead hair stylist Cliona Furey (Nightmare Alley) says. “That second shouldn’t be [one] that is been photographed, so I felt I may use my very own judgment.”
Distinction that to one of many extra iconic moments in Priscilla’s life, recreated for the movie: When she utilized full make-up—together with these large faux eyelashes, along with her beehive hair at its tallest—simply earlier than giving start. The look, completed with a pink mini-dress look, is probably her most well-known, and Coppola invests appreciable time into Priscilla’s course of in perfecting it towards the clock. You possibly can hear the chaos within the background, of individuals ready to take her to the hospital; in her head, although, all is silent. “It’s not even a query that she was going to do a full face of make-up proper earlier than going into labor,” says Spaeny. The scene’s time squeeze was matched by the manufacturing. The crew was shedding gentle. The attention-liner wanted to be actual. “The producers needed to stroll into the hair and make-up trailer and say, ‘Everybody put your brushes down, we now have to cease the place we’re at and begin filming,’” Spaeny says. “We solely had one take to drag that off.”
Sabrina Lantos
The primary time Spaeny wore a wig of Priscilla’s well-known hairdo, it felt heavy. Actually heavy. It additionally unlocked a key a part of her interiority, “of imagining what it could’ve been wish to rise up nevertheless many hours earlier than to current your self like this daily—she was by no means not seen in make-up, even inside the home.” Nonetheless, the precise mechanics demanded some observe. “I needed to observe stepping into automobiles; I hit my head within the automotive so many occasions,” Spaeny says. “It required a princess-like motion.”
Cliona Furey pulled 5 wigs to make use of throughout the movie’s decade-plus timespan. Did she ever fear about going too huge with the hair? “After I did the early ‘60s commencement look with the massive black updo, Sofia even mentioned, ‘Do you suppose it’s too excessive?’” Furey remembers. “And I mentioned, ‘It’s not as excessive as Priscilla’s was!’” They discovered a means to make use of the hair’s sizing and coloring to form the narrative. That black wig, for example, resulted out of Elvis telling Priscilla to dye her hair black, a central occasion of his controlling her. “Or the final wig: It’s an analogous shade and texture to her first wig, the place she’s actually herself and she or he’s pure,” Furey continues. “The hair will get longer and richer in shade, and poofier and greater, as time goes on. Then on the finish, she finds herself—and she or he’s again to a pure look.”
Battat, who’s used to working each with Coppola’s daring creativeness and with a restricted funds, was capable of supply an ideal deal for the costumes. Spaeny jokes that there have been extra items within the wardrobe division than there have been script pages (which is to say, lots of). “These have been the longest fittings I’ve ever executed in my life,” Spaeny says. “I went out to the set per week early simply to attempt to give everybody a headstart.” It’s a outstanding degree of element for a set run on such a good funds. On the times that compelled extra speeding than common, the intricate eyeliner software wanted a “tag-team” between Spaeny and the make-up artists. “We had a stamp for the eyeliner after which I might bounce in and do the ultimate touches myself, just like the wings,” Spaeny says. “All these completely different particulars that you simply needed to suppose by means of whenever you’re going by means of three completely different ages in a single morning.”
