‘It Was Just About Playing a Girl Who Really Loved a Boy’: Olivia DeJonge on Becoming Priscilla Presley For Elvis

Four months after sending through an audition tape for the role of Priscilla Presley in Elvis, Olivia DeJonge had a sit-down meeting with her agent and tentatively asked him whether he had heard back about the Baz Luhrmann biopic. The Melbourne-born, Perth-raised 24-year-old wasn’t hopeful, but her agent “checked his phone and was like, ‘Olivia, do not scream.’” A new text simply read: “Olivia’s the choice for Elvis.” “It was crazy.” 

As a long-time fan of Luhrmann’s work, DeJonge remembers “feeling very intimidated” ahead of filming, but the director put her at ease. “He’s this sort of mad genius, who is very encouraging of play,” she says, smiling. With her star firmly in the ascendant, what are her hopes? “It can be easy to get lost in the sauce of Hollywood,” she says. “I just want to maintain a really beautiful, healthy relationship with the work.” Here, DeJonge reflects on shooting the long-awaited film with Austin Butler.

Vogue: What can we expect from the Elvis film?

Olivia DeJonge: It’s an epic retelling of the life of Elvis Presley, and we’re all very, very excited for it to finally be hitting the big screen. We started it at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic, and obviously everything halted, so it’s really exciting for it to be coming out now.

Were you already a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s?

Yeah, Romeo + Juliet is one of my favorite movies of all time. I studied it in Year 12 for my media exams. I adore Baz’s movies, the way that he immerses his audience—they’re in a league of their own. You can always tell a Baz movie from a still, and I think that’s really, really rare.

Did you have any preconceptions about what working with him might be like?

Not really. I didn’t know anybody that had worked with him before. It’s so different for him to adapt a biopic of somebody, too, because his movies are so fantastical. It’s really exciting for the movie to be told through him because he’s such a visionary—I think the life of Elvis is so dazzling and epic that he’s the best guy for it.