Priscilla Presley feared Michael Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley for publicity

Priscilla Presley feared Michael Jackson (right) was “using” her daughter Lisa Marie Presley (left) when they married in 1994. Photo / Getty Images

Priscilla Presley feared Michael Jackson was “using” her daughter Lisa Marie Presley.

Lisa Marie Presley and Jackson were married from May 1994 to August 1996 but Priscilla Presley has admitted she had grave misgivings about the union and shared her fears with her daughter.

During an interview with Patrick Kielty on Ireland’s The Late Late Show, Kielty said: “One of the things you write about in the book is her marriage to Michael Jackson, and being a mother you had your concerns about that.”

Presley, 80, replied: “Very much so, I had concerns, yes. I didn’t like the idea. I felt that Michael was using her. His popularity was kind of going down. And then all of a sudden, now that they are together, it went up big-time.”

Kielty questioned: “So you think it was a cynical move?”

Presley said: “I do, and I told her.”

Kielty went on: “This was around the time those allegations surrounded him.”

She replied: “That’s right and he knew that, he never wanted to come around and visit or anything. So, what does that say? It says a lot for a mother.”

Presley – who was married to Elvis Presley from 1967 to 1973 – previously admitted she was “appalled” when her daughter revealed she was marrying Jackson.

She made the admissions in Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, with excerpts obtained by the Sun showing Priscilla Presley describing how Lisa Marie Presley confided in her about her romance with the singer during the mid-1990s, before their eventual divorce in 1996.

Presley wrote: “I was appalled by the marriage. I asked her if they had a physical relationship. Like so many people, I wasn’t sure. She said, ‘Yeah’.”

She added she believed Jackson, who was 36 at the time of the wedding, had married her daughter for reasons tied to her family name rather than love.

Presley said: “I knew in my bones that Michael wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie; he was marrying the Presley dynasty.”

She claimed Jackson was seeking “good publicity” as he faced allegations of child sexual abuse in the early 1990s, charges he always denied.

Presley wrote: “Michael was a manipulative man and I think he had his sights set on her long before she knew it. The childlike innocence he projected was part of his public mask.”

Jackson died in 2009, aged 50, from a propofol overdose, while Lisa Marie Presley passed away in 2023 at the age of 54.