Riley Keough Says Michael Jackson Was a ‘Very Normal’ Stepfather
Michael Jackson may have been one of the world’s biggest stars, but to Riley Keough, he was just a typical stepparent.
“I understand that my life was not normal, but for me, it just felt normal,” Keough, 35, recalled of her relationship with the late pop icon on the Thursday, October 10, episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna. “In hindsight, I understand that it was a big thing, them together, but it felt very normal.”
Riley’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, wed Jackson in 1994, the same year she separated from Riley’s father, Danny Keough. The pair were married for two years before calling it quits in 1996. Presley was later married to Nicolas Cage from 2002 to 2004 and to Michael Lockwood from 2006 to 2021, while Jackson went on to wed Debbie Rowe in 1996. The two were together until 2000.
Reflecting on her mother’s romance with Jackson, Riley went on to share, “They lived together and would take me to school and, you know, just regular married stuff.”
The actress told Today cohosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager that the nickname she gave Jackson was “Mimi.”
Jackson died at age 50 in 2009. Presley, who died at age 54 in January 2023, opened up about their marriage in her new posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, which was completed by Riley.
“I fell in love with him because he was normal, just f—g normal,” Presley wrote in the book, which was released on Tuesday, October 8. “His normal side was a side that no one saw.”
Presley further revealed that she was nervous to have sex with the “Thriller” singer, who she said was still a virgin at age 35 when they got together. “I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss,” she shared. “He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened. I was terrified because I didn’t want to make the wrong move.”
Eventually, Presley said “the physical stuff started happening” between the two of them.
Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, made a name for herself in the public eye. She was only 9 years old when her father died in 1977. As she continued to grow up, Lisa Marie was quick to follow in her dad’s footsteps. She released three albums over the […]
Riley, for her part, noted in the book that Presley “wanted to be the perfect woman” for Jackson, but they disagreed on having children. Jackson went on to welcome kids Prince, 27, and Paris, 26, with Rowe, 65, and welcomed son Bigi, 21, via surrogate in 2002. Presley shared Riley and son Benjamin, who died at age 27 in July 2020, with Danny, 59. She also shared twin daughters Harper and Finley, 16, with Lockwood, 63.
Riley has since become a mother herself. Us Weekly confirmed in January 2023 that the actress and her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, had secretly welcomed a daughter, Tupelo Storm, via surrogate.
“My mother was such a great mother, and I think some of that definitely lives through me,” Riley said on Hoda & Jenna. “She was much more strict than I am.”
After Lisa Marie Presley’s death in 2023, her eldest daughter, Riley Keough, picked up where she left off and completed her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown. In the leadup to the book’s October 2024 release, Keough spoke publicly about her mom for the first time since Presley’s death, opening up about her mom’s […]
She also reflected on experiencing the “loss of life and the birth of life in such close proximity in time,” adding, “It’s a strange and beautiful kind of experience.”
After completing From Here to the Great Unknown on behalf of her late mother, Riley told Kotb, 60, and Bush Hager, 42, that she hopes readers “connect to her on a human level.”
She explained: “I think that a lot of the things that she goes through in the book are very normal issues. And I think that the circumstance is extraordinary — in that she’s Elvis [Presley]’s daughter and our family is what it is and whatever — but it’s addiction and it’s mother and daughter relationships and it’s falling in love and getting married and having kids and grief. The themes are very human, so I think just human connection is what she wanted. She wanted to share her sorry with the hopes that people would connect and not feel as alone.”
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