Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, actor Riley Keough, has taken on the responsibility of maintaining Graceland, his historic home. While she never met her grandfather, she hopes to keep his memory alive through the home. Her role as the owner of Graceland might have surprised her young self. She admitted that when she was a child, she resented Elvis.

Elvis’ granddaughter said she resented him when she was young

Keough is Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter. Lisa Marie was at Graceland on the day Elvis died and continued to deal with the fallout of his death for decades. 

“Sometimes I’d walk into my mom’s bedroom and find her sitting on the floor alone, drunk, listening to her father’s music, crying,” Keough wrote in the book From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie’s memoir. “But she’d never talk about it, or listen to his music sober.”

It was clear to Keough, even from a young age, that her mother was deep in mourning for the entirety of her life. The loss of Elvis caused her pain, and Keough began to resent him for it.

“I certainly knew that she was heartbroken my whole life,” Keough wrote. “I remember when I was little feeling angry at Elvis for leaving my mother and for causing all this pain.”

She said that his music always reminded her of her mother’s heartbreak.

“Whenever I would hear Elvis’s voice, I would feel my mother’s anguish,” she wrote. “Feel the loss of him.”

Keough was able to move past this feeling, though. As the owner of Graceland, she hopes to preserve his legacy.