Dark secrets, intense betrayals, and deep ties to Scientology have once again surfaced regarding Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, exposing a turbulent family history far removed from their polished public personas.
The Terrified Newcomer on the Set of Dallas
When Priscilla Presley joined the cast of the hit TV show Dallas as Jenna Wade, she was utterly paralyzed by fear. Described by on-set journalists as “truly scared of everyone,” she refused to speak in front of reporters and remained completely locked up in her acting. To shatter her stiff inhibitions, co-stars Patrick Duffy and Steve Canali subjected her to a brutal “practical joke” on a scorching 110-degree July day in Fort Worth. Stuffed into a two-seat Mercedes with broken air conditioning acting like a sauna, they dragged her to a local spot for lunch and heavy margaritas, returning to the set drenched in sweat and pleasantly buzzed—finally forcing Priscilla to drop her icy guard.
Teenage Substance Abuse and Rock Bottom
By her sweet sixteen in 1984, Lisa Marie’s life had careened completely out of control. Plagued by severe substance abuse—cryptically referred to using soda-brand code words—she dropped out of the unhappy Happy Valley School. Her downward spiral culminated after a horrifying three-day bender where she stayed wide awake, high and paranoid, before a moment of sheer clarity hit. Realizing she was staring down death, she flushed her stash down the toilet, forcing Priscilla to step in with drastic measures to save her life.
The Ultimate Boyfriend Betrayal
Lisa’s personal crisis was violently accelerated by the boy she blindly adored. Scott, her trusted boyfriend, committed the ultimate betrayal by secretly selling private photographs of them in the park to The Globe tabloid for a cool $10,000. Lisa flat-out refused to believe it until police raided Scott’s home at the persistence of Priscilla’s assistant and recovered the physical negatives. Shattered, betrayed, and spiraling, Lisa dropped out of school entirely in the eleventh grade and never returned.
Inside the Scientology Fortress and the Bizarre Zenu Doctrine
To rescue Lisa from her addiction, Priscilla sequestered her in the Scientology Celebrity Center’s historic Manor House and forced her through the rigorous “Purif” detoxification regime. While tabloids shrieked about an “evil cult” manipulating the Presley fortune, Priscilla staunchly defended the organization. She casually brushed off the bizarre, sci-fi cosmology of founder L. Ron Hubbard—including the infamous $6,000 “Truth Revealed” course teaching that an intergalactic ruler named Zenu destroyed alien souls (thetans) with hydrogen-bombed volcanoes, attaching them to human pressure points as body thetans. Priscilla admitted she didn’t question it because what she got out of it was beneficial. Critics note a mutual exploitation: the Presleys traded their high-profile star power for protection and insulation, while Scientology harvested their unmatched celebrity clout.
Silencing a Musical Legacy
Even as Lisa tried to rebuild her life, family dynamics continued to stifle her potential. When a seventeen-year-old Lisa expressed her burning desire to become a singer, Priscilla flatly shut her down, dismissing it as a fleeting whim comparable to her abandoned piano lessons and an expensive dust-collecting drum set. Fearing Lisa would fail or act as a mere dilettante living in Elvis’s monumental shadow, Priscilla blocked her musical ambitions entirely. Instead, she forced her into a lowly office gopher job for estate worker Jerry Schilling—a restrictive decision that insiders believe severely stunted Lisa’s artistic development and confidence for years.