Austin Butler Remembers Friendship With Lisa Marie Presley: “She Just Opened Up To Me”

The estate and family of Elvis Presley have been in tumult recently. Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis has been enjoying success since its summer premiere but a family is now mourning the untimely passing of the King’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. Elvis star Austin Butler says he connected with Lisa Marie with an ease neither of them ever experienced before.

Butler has been participating in interviews across late-night television in celebration of his best actor Oscar nomination for his performance as the “Hound Dog” singer. Both he and Lisa Marie had just walked the red carpet at the Golden Globes. While on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Butler commented on that remarkable memory and the unique friendship he forged with Lisa Marie, who he says allowed him into a part of her life normally kept private.

Austin Butler says he and Lisa Marie Presley became friends faster than anyone else

“We got so close so fast,” Butler said of his friendship with Lisa Marie. Reportedly, it made Butler privy to personal parts of the Presley world, including a tour through Elvis’s bedroom, which he was famously private about. “His bedroom is a place that most people never get to see. Up there, he’s not Elvis. He’s just dad. To hear those stories — I’ll treasure that forever.”

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He’s also appreciative of just how well they clicked – along with how fast and how deeply. “I’ve never had an experience where I met somebody and felt an immediate depth of relationship to them,” shared Butler. “[Lisa Marie] was a person who didn’t really have anything to prove and wouldn’t open up to everybody, and she just opened up to me.”

First meeting, fast friendship

On January 12, Lisa Marie Presley died suddenly after suffering from cardiac arrest. She would have been 55 a few weeks later, on February 1. Butler has worked extensively with the Presley family and Elvis’s estate for his role in the biopic, reading extensively through Graceland archives to fully understand the late rockstar. For their support, Butler has voiced his immense gratitude to the Presley family.

“Thank you for opening your hearts, your memories, your home to me,” said Butler after winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama award. Later, he gave another shoutout to the Presleys who “welcomed me into their family in such a beautiful way,” adding, “I feel so endlessly grateful to them that they provided this space for me to try and capture the essence of this man that means so much to them and that they love so much.”

Listen to Butler reflect on his friendship with Lisa Marie in the interview below.