FROM LM'S 2008 MARIE CLAIRE INTERVIEW:
We're all going to screw up," Presley says. "The important thing is, do you learn from it and not do it again? Can you make it better in the future? Can you change? Because, Lord knows, I've @#$%ed up many, many times."
What was the worst time?
"My biggest mistake? Let's see," she begins quietly. "How can I word this? Um. Well. Leaving my first marriage, for the person that I left it for — that was probably the biggest mistake of my life."
She is referring, of course, to Michael Jackson, a man whose name she, consciously or not, avoids saying aloud. This is understandable. The lunacy of the 1994 pairing exploded the celebrity Richter scale. There was the strained Diane Sawyer interview, the rumor that Jackson was only in the relationship for her dad's song catalog, the awkward "kiss" on the MTV Video Music Awards. Presley, poignantly, was not in on the joke.
"I was really naive at the time. I was in la-la land." She grimaces slightly, pushes some fallen hair from her forehead, then lets it all go. "I had been really sheltered. I got married the first time very, very young. And the marriage I was in, there was so much resentment about who I was, because I had more than he did, and it became a power struggle. It is hard for a man to be with a woman who is stronger, wealthier. So in my mind I'm thinking, I know, I'll get with someone more compatible. I wasn't thinking what everyone else was thinking, which was that I must have been out of my *$%# mind."
Was she?
She pauses, smiles.
"I was just in a bubble. And able to be snowed. I hadn't been bitten by the snake of life yet. I grew up after that. I had to."
FROM HER 2003 PLAYBOY INTERVIEW:
PLAYBOY: When you announced the marriage, you said in a press release, "I understand and support him."
Please explain Michael to those of us who really don't understand him.
PRESLEY: Here's the thing: For awhile, Michael was like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain.
At one time he was really good at manipulating a Howard Hughes type of image: "He's mysterious, fascinating."
He became this freak. And now he can't get out from under it.
When you're the king of your own palace, there are no morals or ethics or integrity.
Everyone will kiss your @ss and then give you the push that knocks you over.
PLAYBOY: Did you and Michael discuss having kids?
PRESLEY: Yeah. [Laughs]
I got out of that one.
"I just don't think it's a good idea right now."
But I knew that's what he wanted.
And I knew Debbie Rowe was offering to do it for him while we were married, according to him.
She was a nurse who had a crush on him and offered to have his babies.
PLAYBOY: Was he trying to leverage you into agreeing?
PRESLEY: Kind of.
"Debbie Rowe says she'll do it."
Ok, have Debbie Rowe do it!
And it's funny, when I imagined having a child with him, all I could ever see was a custody battle nightmare.
PLAYBOY: He just wanted to find someone to bear his children.
PRESLEY: I think so, but I don't know.
PLAYBOY: Did you watch his TV interviews last winter with Martin Bashir?
PRESLEY: I watched, because I was on the radio tour that week and I was being asked about it everyday.
I was like, Could there be any worse timing?
I walked away in 1996.
It's not something consuming my thoughts anymore.
PLAYBOY: When Diane Sawyer interviewed you and Michael, she asked if you two had sex, and you were indignant.
Can you see how the marriage looked suspicous to people.
PRESLEY: I can see that, only because that's his thing, not mine.
That always upset me.
I was married for several years to a bass player nobody knew and before that never dated a celebrity.
I never did anything to try and get publicity.
I got caught up in Michael's thing, which was manipulation.
I was like, "@#%$ you people, that's not who I am.
Why am I being blamed for a publicity stunt?
Oh, I'm Miss Aspiring Singer, and now I want a record deal?
That's why I'm with him?"
PLAYBOY: It sounds like you think he used you.
PRESLEY: I'm not going to say he did or he didn't.
There are things that don't look good, that's all I can say.
And most people saw it at the time except me.
PLAYBOY: When did the relationship go sour for you?
PRESLEY: Not long after Diane Sawyer.
I started to wake up and ask a lot of questions.
I don't want to go into detail, but it went downhill pretty quick.
PLAYBOY: What about your kiss at the Video Music Awards in 1994?
It looked staged and awkward.
PRESLEY: It looked awkward because I wanted out of my skin.
At the 11th hour, he says, "I'm gonna kiss you."
I was like, "No, I don't want to do that.
Do we have to?
That's bullish."
On the way there I kept saying, "Do we have to?"
I squeezed his hand so hard that I cut off the circulation.
He wouldn't tell me when it was going to happen.
PLAYBOY: It was reported that you asked him for a divorce while he was in the hospital recovering from "exhaustion."
PRESLEY: Not true.
There was a bit of a showdown in the hospital, and I didn't understand what was wrong with him.
I didn't know what he was up to.
When I started asking too many questions about what was wrong, he asked me to leave.
This is the real story.
He said, "You're causing trouble."
The doctors wanted me to go.
I freaked out, because it was all too familiar.
When he got out, I called him and said, "I want out."
