Where Was Priscilla Presley Movie 2023 Filmed On Location?

If you’re asking about the big-screen 'Elvis' that features Priscilla as a central character, most of the shooting actually took place down under in Australia. The production built huge period-accurate sets at Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast and used locations around Brisbane and Sydney to stand in for mid-century American streets. A lot of what looks like Memphis and Graceland in the film is a meticulously recreated set rather than the actual house. There were also some shoots done in the United States, with Los Angeles locations and second-unit work supplementing the Australian footage for authentic-looking concert and Hollywood scenes. I thought the choice to recreate everything in controlled studios paid off — the production design nailed the era, so even close-up scenes that clearly had to match archival footage feel seamless, and that’s what sold it to me.

I love how films disguise one place as another, and with 'Priscilla' that sleight of hand was super obvious and delightful. The bulk of the movie was shot in New Orleans, Louisiana — the city’s mix of period neighborhoods and roomy studio space made it a perfect stand-in for 1960s Memphis and the glitzy Las Vegas stages. The production leaned heavily on soundstages and local production facilities to rebuild interiors like Graceland’s living areas and the neon-packed showroom sets, while select exteriors used New Orleans streets and mansions that could pass for the South of the era. What I appreciated as a viewer was how the production design and locations worked together. Instead of trying to shoot everything in Memphis, the crew used New Orleans’ architectural variety and tax incentives to their advantage, building meticulously detailed sets so the camera never felt like it was “standing in” for somewhere else. There were also some additional shoots and second-unit work in California to capture certain exteriors and studio-specific needs, but New Orleans was clearly the production’s home base. Seeing the recreated Graceland interiors and Las Vegas numbers on screen felt authentic, which is a testament to scouting and set construction — it made the film’s atmosphere much more immersive, and I enjoyed spotting little period details throughout.

It's interesting how people keep asking whether Priscilla Presley actually signed off on the movie script — I dug into the different projects and the short version is: she did give her blessing to Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla' and worked with the filmmakers, but that doesn't mean she sat in on every draft or wrote dialogue. I loved learning that Priscilla cooperated with Coppola by granting access to personal photos, memorabilia, and her recollections. That kind of access is huge for a director who wants authenticity; Sofia has said she interviewed Priscilla and had her blessing to tell that side of the story. Still, 'blessing' and 'script approval' are different beasts: legal script approval would usually be spelled out in contracts, and publicly available coverage emphasizes collaboration and consent rather than line-by-line veto power. For older or estate-controlled projects like Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis', the Presley estate and family had input at different levels, and Priscilla showed support at times, but again she wasn't credited as a co-writer. Personally, I found it reassuring that the people closest to Elvis were willing to engage—even if the filmmakers still made artistic choices that shape the narrative in ways that not everyone will love.

I was riveted by 'Priscilla' the moment the film opened — it feels like a hush lifted from a very public life so you can see the private scaffolding underneath. The movie follows Priscilla Beaulieu from her teenage years in Germany, where she first meets a young, magnetic Elvis, through the early, bewildering years of their relationship. It spends a lot of time on courtship that’s equal parts fairy-tale and power imbalance: Elvis’s charisma, the glamour of his world, and how quickly Priscilla is folded into it. The plot isn’t a blow-by-blow celebrity biography. Instead it zooms in on domestic moments — the manicured isolation of Graceland, the rituals of fame, the ways control seeps into everyday life — and shows how a young woman learns to hold herself together while being both adored and smothered. Sofia Coppola’s direction leans into atmosphere, so the story is told as much through quiet looks, music, and the décor as through dialogue. Cailee Spaeny’s portrayal emphasizes vulnerability and shrewd observation, and the film charts Priscilla’s gradual realization that life with Elvis is not the whole of who she might become. There are scenes that underline the emotional cost: missed agency, the strain of growing up in public, and the slow forging of selfhood that eventually leads her to step away. I left the theater feeling oddly protective of Priscilla — the film made me see her not as a shadow of a famous man but as someone who fought to reclaim herself, which stuck with me long after the credits rolled.

People get confused because two big recent films touched the Elvis-Priscilla story from different angles, and they cast different actresses for Priscilla Presley. If you’re talking about the Sofia Coppola film 'Priscilla' (the one that centers on Priscilla’s perspective), Priscilla Presley is played by Cailee Spaeny. If you mean Baz Luhrmann’s louder, more Elvis-centric biopic 'Elvis', then Priscilla is portrayed by Olivia DeJonge. Both performances are distinct and reflect the director’s priorities: Spaeny’s role leans into introspection and quiet unease, while DeJonge’s work is more about chemistry and the whirlwind of fame unfolding around her character. I’ve watched both and it’s fascinating how casting shapes the whole feel. In 'Priscilla', Cailee Spaeny navigates a messy, claustrophobic domestic world—Sofia Coppola stages long, intimate scenes where small gestures and silences carry the weight. Jacob Elordi plays Elvis in that film, and the focus is almost entirely on Priscilla’s interior life as she negotiates identity and control. By contrast, 'Elvis' is a spectacle: Austin Butler’s performance dominates, the edits are kinetic, and Olivia DeJonge’s Priscilla appears through the roar of his rise to stardom—she’s warm, but often placed in the orbit of Elvis rather than at the center. As a fan, I love that both choices exist. Spaeny’s portrayal gave me goosebumps because of the way Coppola lets you sit with uncertainty and quiet rebellion; it felt like peeling back layers. DeJonge brought a youthful charm and vulnerability that made the relationship dynamic believable amid the circus of fame. So, depending on which movie you meant, the name you’re looking for is either Cailee Spaeny ('Priscilla') or Olivia DeJonge ('Elvis'). Personally, I found myself thinking about them both afterward—different films, different windows into the same real-life story, and both performances stuck with me in their own ways.

Big fan of quiet, character-driven films, so the release of 'Priscilla' felt like an event to me. The film first showed at festivals in early September 2023 — it premiered at the Venice Film Festival — which is where a lot of buzz started. After the festival run, it opened in U.S. theaters on October 27, 2023, courtesy of A24, and that’s the date most people in America would recognize as the theatrical release. I saw it on that opening weekend and the vibe in the theater was interesting: people who knew Elvis lore, film buffs tracking Sofia Coppola’s work, and casual viewers drawn by the cast. Cailee Spaeny’s performance as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi’s take on Elvis were the central talking points, and Sofia’s direction gave it that intimate, slightly dreamlike feel. International release dates were staggered a bit, with many markets getting it around late October to early November 2023. Personally, the theatrical experience made the film feel more immediate and melancholic in a way that smaller-screen viewing didn’t — definitely worth catching on the big screen if you like subtle period pieces.

The actress who plays Priscilla in Baz Luhrmann's big-screen 'Elvis' is Olivia DeJonge. I dug into her performance when the film came out and thought she did a delicate job of portraying that awkward, teenage magnetism Priscilla had when she first met Elvis — Luhrmann frames their relationship through Elvis's whirlwind life, and Olivia sells the shy, curious side of Priscilla very quietly. If you're thinking of the other recent film titled 'Priscilla', that's a different take: Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla in Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla', which zeroes in on Priscilla's perspective much more. So depending on which movie you mean, the name changes — Olivia DeJonge in 'Elvis' and Cailee Spaeny in 'Priscilla'. Both performances stuck with me for different reasons: one feels like a portrait inside a spectacle, the other like an intimate character study, and I appreciated them both in their own registers.

Super excited to chat about this — the 2023 film 'Priscilla' was directed by Sofia Coppola. I saw chatter about it everywhere and I loved how Coppola's signature mood carries through: delicate, melancholic, and hyper-aware of surface glamour and private loneliness. She cast Cailee Spaeny in the title role and Jacob Elordi as Elvis, and the movie leans into intimate moments rather than spectacle. That contrast makes it sit completely differently next to the big, bombastic 'Elvis' from 2022. I've followed Coppola's work since 'The Virgin Suicides' and 'Lost in Translation', and with 'Priscilla' she keeps exploring women’s interior lives, the weirdness of fame, and the cost of being beloved from a distance. The costumes, the 1960s-70s set pieces, and the sound design serve her quiet point of view, and I appreciated how she lets scenes breathe instead of editing for constant energy. Personally, it felt like watching a diary turned into film — tender, a little mournful, and oddly empowering in the way it centers Priscilla's perspective. I walked out thinking about how different directors can take the same historical figures and make entirely different emotional experiences — and Coppola nailed her particular, gentle angle.

I got pulled into 'Priscilla' the moment the trailers landed, and what surprised me most was how the movie treats Elvis as a character rather than a concert phenomenon. The film absolutely includes scenes where Elvis appears — he’s portrayed on screen by an actor — but you won’t find archival Elvis concert footage or the original Elvis Presley recordings sprinkled through the soundtrack. Instead, those moments are intimate, staged to serve Priscilla’s viewpoint, not to recreate full-blown performances for fans of his stage persona. The director’s choice makes the movie feel more like a personal portrait than a music biopic. When you watch a recreated stage moment, it’s often framed to underline Priscilla’s experience — close-ups, pauses, people in the wings — rather than the roar of a packed arena. That can be jarring if you expected a parade of classic Elvis hits, but it’s also quietly effective: the absence of the original recordings shifts your focus to relationships and power dynamics. For me, that approach made the story feel more human and less like a greatest-hits montage, and I appreciated the emotional intimacy it brought.

Todavía me emociona hablar de esto porque la película 'Priscilla' tiene ese gusto a recuerdo y la mezcla de lugares reales con recreaciones es fascinante. Gran parte de lo que vemos en pantalla está pensado para evocar tres sitios clave de la vida de Priscilla: Wiesbaden (Alemania), Graceland en Memphis y los escenarios de Las Vegas. En la práctica, muchas escenas que representan Alemania se rodaron en localizaciones europeas que podían parecerse a barrios militares de los años 60, y varias casas y hoteles se recrearon en decorados o en calles europeas adaptadas para la época. Por otro lado, las escenas que muestran la vida en Estados Unidos —sobre todo los interiores de Graceland y los conciertos— combinan rodaje en estudios con algunas visitas a locaciones reales o muy parecidas, porque es habitual que el equipo construya réplicas para controlar iluminación y vestuario. Las actuaciones en clubes y salas de concierto muchas veces se hicieron en sets y en teatros de ciudades como Los Ángeles o en estudios europeos que sirvieron de sustituto. En resumen: la película mezcla rodaje en locaciones europeas y estadounidenses y muchas recreaciones de estudio para capturar con precisión la estética de la época; para mí eso funciona genial, le da un aire nostálgico que me gustó mucho.