Riley Keough Speaks out on Allegations Surrounding Her Ex-Stepfather Michael Jackson

Daisy Jones & The Six star Riley Keough reveals she remained unaware of the allegations against Michael Jackson during his brief marriage to her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, offering a rare glimpse into her family’s complex relationship with the King of Pop. During a Jan. 15 appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Keough, 35, addressed the controversy surrounding Jackson, who was her stepfather for two years.

“I was never told anything. It’s actually not something I ever asked as an adult,” she explained. “We didn’t know anything. We didn’t know about any allegations. We didn’t know. We had no awareness of that.”

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The allegations, which emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, never resulted in any convictions for Jackson, who died in 2009 at age 50. Keough’s mother, Lisa Marie, who passed away in January 2023, addressed the accusations in her posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, writing emphatically, “I never saw a goddamn thing like that. I personally would’ve killed him if I did.”

Keough reflected on how Jackson’s 1994 marriage to her mother, which followed Lisa Marie’s split from Danny Keough, impacted their lifestyle. “I think when she saw Michael’s life, there were things that he had that she didn’t have,” Keough shared. “She didn’t have a plane at the time or things like that. She then was like, ‘Oh, I should have a plane, and I should have this and that.’”

The changes were dramatic compared to Lisa Marie’s previous marriage to Keough’s father, Danny. “Before that, she was with my dad and their life was very simple,” Keough explained. “At home, she didn’t have 10 million assistants. She didn’t need all of that. I think that changed.”

Despite the controversy surrounding Jackson, Keough maintains that her mother and the pop star shared genuine feelings. “The one thing I know is that they were in love and that their love for one another was genuine,” she stated. “I was there and I remember. Everything else, I don’t know, because I wasn’t there for [it].”

The actress also revealed her father’s likely reaction to the situation, though she never witnessed it directly. “I would imagine that my dad was really heartbroken and reading the news and I’m sure that — I’m just imagining,” she said, adding that her parents maintained a policy of not fighting in front of their children.

The interview offers insight into the complicated dynamics of growing up in one of entertainment’s most prominent families as the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and temporary stepdaughter to Jackson. Keough recalled how her family’s fame necessitated private shopping trips, with stores closing down to accommodate them – a practice she suggests was “kind of like the only way our family could do things. If we wanted to go to a toy store or something like that—ride rides. I don’t know if it was necessarily done for us or if it was just for our family situation.”

Lisa Marie was later married to Nicolas Cage from 2002 to 2004 and Michael Lockwood from 2006 until two years before her death in 2023. She had twin daughters, Harper and Finley, now 16, with Lockwood, in addition to Riley and her late son Benjamin, who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020.