Priscilla Presley joined Scientology after meeting John Travolta when celebrating Lisa Marie Presley’s 10th birthday.
In Lisa Marie’s From Here to the Great Unknown memoir — released posthumously on Tuesday, October 8 — she wrote that her mom was “really good at birthdays.” When she turned 10, Priscilla, 79, arranged for Travolta, 70, to meet Lisa Marie.
“He was having a hot moment with Welcome Back, Kotter. He talked to her about Scientology, and a few days later, she joined,” Lisa Marie wrote, noting her mother described Scientology as something that “can help you become really powerful.”
Lisa Marie wrote that Scientology “helped” her feel like she belonged somewhere. “It became my tribe,” she explained.
“My mom would drop me off after school at their building in Hollywood,” Lisa Marie recalled. “I felt like she was dumping me there so they could handle me, and she didn’t have to.”
During the lowest points of her teenage years — after dropping out of multiple boarding schools and experimenting with drugs — Priscilla made Lisa Marie move into the Scientology Celebrity Centre. The first day, Lisa Maire had “a four-day bender in that room.”
Amid her ups and downs with mom, Priscilla tried to get Lisa Marie to move home — and they had a blowup fight. When Lisa Marie decided to “hit the streets” instead of moving in with her mom or going to rehab, Scientology helped find a solution.
Lisa Marie moved back into her Celebrity Centre apartment and started to do really well.
“They made me take care of somebody who came in legitimately addicted to drugs,” she wrote. “I became really close with that girl, really took her under my wing. … I really thrived taking care of her, helping somebody else.”
Despite Scientology being a major part of her life, Lisa Marie eventually distanced herself from the church in 2013, calling it “too much” for her in an interview after parting ways.
“Uncovering the fact that I was surrounded by people who were not well-intended, for one,” she told USA Weekend at the time. “Confidants [who were] very, very intimately and closely involved with me and my life. And had been for years. Basically, it was a big sinister situation, where there was like, kind of intel and covert ops going on, and a whole effort to control me that I didn’t know about.”
From Here to the Great Unknown is out now. The book was cowritten by daughter Riley Keough, who finished the book following Lisa Marie’s January 2023 death at age 54.
