Priscilla Presley is recounting a painful experience amid the demise of her marriage to Elvis Presley.
In her new book Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, the Naked Gun actress, 80, recalled how the King of Rock and Roll “fixated” on karate instructor Mike Stone — who she admits to having an affair with — months after informing Elvis she was leaving him.
“It was easier to blame another man than to face the truth. I didn’t leave because of Mike Stone,” Priscilla writes in her book. “And I didn’t leave because Elvis had forced himself on me when he found out about Mike. He had not.”
“Elvis had felt emasculated. He’d needed to prove to himself and to me that he could make love ‘like a real man,’ the way he imagined a karate master doing it,” she explained. “Elvis made love to me forcefully, not forcibly.”
Describing Elvis’ “usual tenderness and consideration” were “missing” during that encounter, Priscilla explained, “It was emotionally hurtful, and it left me with an unhappy memory of my last experience of sexual intimacy with Elvis.”
The businesswoman and the “Heartbreak Hotel” vocalist tied the knot in 1967 and eventually divorced in 1973. The pair shared a daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away in January 2023 at 54 years old.
Priscilla later remarried Marco Garibaldi in 1984 — with whom she shares son Navarone Garibaldi, 38 — but they divorced in 2006.
Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis hits shelves on Tuesday, September 23.