Riley Keough, Vanity Fair's August cover star, reflects on pivotal moments in her life and career. From her first runway show when she was 14 years old to honoring her late grandfather Elvis Presley at the hand ceremony alongside mother Lisa Marie Presley and grandmother Priscilla Presley, the actress gives her reframed perspective on how the moments defined her.
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This video was conducted prior to the strike.
Director: Max Bartick
Director of Photography: Bradley Wickham
Editor: Cory Stevens
Producer: Madison Coffey
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Coordinator: Natasha Soto-Albors
Camera Operator: Alfonso
Gaffer: Meicen Meng
Audio Engineer: Lily Van Leuwen
Production Assistant: Rowmel Findley
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This video was conducted prior to the strike.
Director: Max Bartick
Director of Photography: Bradley Wickham
Editor: Cory Stevens
Producer: Madison Coffey
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Coordinator: Natasha Soto-Albors
Camera Operator: Alfonso
Gaffer: Meicen Meng
Audio Engineer: Lily Van Leuwen
Production Assistant: Rowmel Findley
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Crazy fun fact, Zoe and I's parents were friends
00:02 when we were really little.
00:04 So we would hang out as Nepo babies, literally.
00:07 [laughing]
00:09 Hi, I'm Riley Keough, and today I'm going to be
00:12 revisiting some photos from my life.
00:15 This is reframed.
00:22 I feel nervous.
00:25 I don't know what's coming for me right now.
00:27 So I'm a little anxious.
00:30 [laughing]
00:31 But I'm excited, and this is very cool.
00:33 Oh my God, Hanson!
00:37 This was like the best day of my life.
00:40 That's my brother and that's me,
00:41 and I was like the biggest Hanson fan.
00:44 I mean, I think every girl was probably
00:47 the biggest Hanson fan, but I was like truly,
00:49 like huge fan, and my mom took us backstage in New York,
00:54 and we got to meet Hanson.
00:56 And I think at the time, I loved Zach Hanson.
01:00 I had a Zach and Taylor moment, and I think this was Zach.
01:04 I'd cut my hair here, but I looked like Hanson.
01:07 A lot, and I remember being a fan of them,
01:11 but also going like, I feel like also
01:13 this could be my family.
01:14 I follow them on Instagram, they don't follow me back.
01:18 Okay, this is really sweet.
01:22 This was also really cringe.
01:24 This was my very first fashion show,
01:26 walking in a fashion show for Dolce & Gabbana.
01:29 I would've been like 14.
01:30 I remember I was very nervous,
01:32 and I remember they were playing,
01:34 I think it was "Queen" by Prince.
01:36 It was a big moment for my 14-year-old self.
01:39 My whole life is pretty public,
01:41 but I think this probably felt like the first time
01:43 that I was doing something alone,
01:45 as opposed to like a family thing.
01:49 I keep thinking this is a microphone,
01:51 and I'm supposed to be talking to it.
01:54 Oh, this is a good narrative,
01:56 'cause now we're with Dior,
01:58 and we're walking in the Dior show,
02:00 and she's grown up a little bit.
02:01 She's a little older, she probably is walking
02:03 a little better.
02:04 The one thing I remember about this show
02:06 is that a lot of the girls had to wear hair pieces,
02:09 or it took a lot of work to get their frizz out like that,
02:13 and mine was like, [imitates buzzing]
02:15 which is natural, 'cause my hair is really frizzy.
02:18 Okay, I was very nervous here.
02:22 This was so weird.
02:24 I don't know why I was so nervous.
02:25 I was just presenting,
02:26 but Zoe and I, who's a very good friend of mine,
02:29 we got asked to present together for an MTV thing,
02:33 and I think we just had to be like,
02:35 "Here's Vampire Weekend,"
02:36 and I remember being so nervous.
02:38 I don't know why.
02:39 I get stage fright when I'm myself.
02:42 Crazy fun fact.
02:44 Zoe and I's parents were friends when we were really little,
02:47 so we would hang out as Nepo babies, literally.
02:50 [laughs]
02:53 And our parents breastfed us next to each other.
02:57 Yeah, so we met a long time ago,
03:00 but we re-met when I was probably 17.
03:03 I think it was a house party in LA.
03:05 We had a lot of mutual friends,
03:06 and we just became very good friends,
03:09 and then we did "Mad Max" together,
03:10 and she's a lifelong childhood friend.
03:14 Wow, this is very cute.
03:18 So this was my very first movie premiere.
03:21 I was maybe 19 or 20 or something,
03:24 and I'm with Kristen and Dakota and Joan.
03:26 It was for "The Runaways."
03:27 This was the first movie I ever booked,
03:29 and it was with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning,
03:32 who at the time were the most famous people in the world,
03:37 and I was probably like, "Ugh," which is that vibe.
03:41 I think they thought I didn't wanna hang out,
03:43 but I was just really nervous.
03:45 But yeah, now Kristen is a very good friend of mine,
03:48 and Dakota, haven't seen Joan in a while,
03:51 but she's cool.
03:52 Okay, I'm nervous, but here we go.
03:55 This was a music video I did with Justin Timberlake.
03:58 I was playing the love interest.
04:01 I had to be in a toxic relationship with Justin
04:05 and fight around the kitchen,
04:07 and then I hit him with a pan.
04:08 I remember it was a roll that they sent out to the agencies
04:13 that was like, "We need an actor for this
04:15 "because there's acting involved,"
04:18 because I get really angry and throw some beans
04:21 or something, I can't remember.
04:22 And yeah, it was just very cool.
04:24 I mean, it's like, again, my teenage dream.
04:26 It's crazy to be in a video with Justin Timberlake.
04:29 I think I was like, "This is crazy," you know?
04:32 Just a moment of like, "Wow, I made it."
04:34 No, I'm just kidding. [laughs]
04:37 This is the war rig in "Mad Max Fury Road,"
04:41 where I spent many, many, many months
04:43 sitting with these guys.
04:45 Probably one of the most life-changing experiences
04:48 of my life thus far.
04:50 I was in Namibia for seven or eight months
04:53 shooting this crazy movie
04:55 and made some of my best lifelong friends
04:58 and had a really wild experience.
05:01 We would just do these really long days in the desert
05:04 and just be in the war rig,
05:06 and it felt like what you see in the movie,
05:08 just very intense, and then go home
05:10 and all hang out together.
05:13 I met my husband.
05:14 When we were shooting, the crew was so huge
05:16 and there were so many stunties.
05:18 I kind of was like, "Oh, he's kind of cute."
05:21 I asked him to teach me how to surf,
05:24 which is really funny 'cause I have no interest
05:26 in learning how to surf now. [laughs]
05:28 But I told him I was gonna surf
05:31 and do all these things with him,
05:32 and I pretended I was this cool, beachy girl, and no.
05:37 [laughs]
05:40 None.
05:41 I catfished him.
05:43 [laughs]
05:46 This is a scene from a movie I did
05:48 called "Under the Silver Lake" with Andrew Garfield,
05:51 and I'm looking at the sky.
05:52 This was a very cool movie to film
05:54 because it was in Los Angeles,
05:56 and I've only ever been able to film three things
05:58 in Los Angeles, which is where I live.
06:00 Didn't have a lot to do in this movie
06:02 'cause, spoiler alert, I disappear. [laughs]
06:05 But I do have a memory on this set
06:11 where it was actually very stressful.
06:13 I was in the makeup trailer,
06:16 and I was eating a granola bar or something,
06:20 and I was about to shoot a scene
06:21 where I have to kiss Andrew,
06:22 and the makeup lady was like, "Are there peanuts in that?"
06:26 And I was like, "I think, I don't know."
06:28 And then she ran away and got the producer,
06:31 who's a friend of mine, and the producer came in
06:33 and was like, "Riley, Andrew's very allergic to peanuts,
06:37 "and we have to shut the set down."
06:39 And they shouldn't have been at craft,
06:41 and I don't know why they're on set.
06:44 Yeah, and I was just kind of like, "Oh, fuck.
06:47 "That's crazy."
06:48 But also, thank God that this woman caught it
06:50 'cause I had no idea.
06:53 This is me with two people who I love very dearly,
06:58 Taylor Page and Janicza Bravo, shooting "Zola."
07:01 I spent a lot of time with Janicza
07:03 kind of trying to understand exactly what she wanted
07:06 'cause on the page, the character was totally outrageous,
07:08 and Janicza's kind of like allowed me to go
07:13 as far as I wanted and didn't kind of pull me back in,
07:17 which was a really fun experience.
07:19 There was like one day where we were shooting a scene
07:22 between Nick Braun and I, and I have to throw,
07:24 I have to throw a phone at him,
07:28 and I threw it so hard on this take,
07:31 and it went, and hit him in the balls.
07:33 And I felt like, I've never felt so bad.
07:36 Like, I was like, "Oh, fuck."
07:39 We cut, and he was like, he came up to me,
07:41 and he was like, "Did you do that on purpose?"
07:43 [laughs]
07:45 I was like, "I swear to God, I did not do that.
07:49 "It was an accident, and I'm so sorry."
07:52 And he was really hurt.
07:54 Like, I really hurt him.
07:56 It's not funny at all, but it was just funny
07:58 that he thought I did it on purpose.
08:00 If you're watching, Nick, I promise it was an accident.
08:03 [gasps]
08:05 Aw.
08:08 You guys are gonna make me cry with some of these.
08:10 So this was for the Elvis movie.
08:12 One of the things that we got to do
08:14 on this beautiful experience was put our hands
08:17 outside of Mann's Chinese Theater in the ground,
08:20 and we all got to do it together.
08:22 My mom, my grandmother, my sisters, and I,
08:25 and Baz and Austin were there to introduce us,
08:28 and my brother wasn't able to be there,
08:30 so we did his signature too,
08:33 and it was very emotional.
08:34 It was like, I don't think you can watch a film
08:37 about your family without it just being
08:40 incredibly personal experience.
08:42 This was Vanity Fair.
08:46 Woo!
08:47 [laughs]
08:48 Got to wear this beautiful dress that I loved very much,
08:51 and my husband was there.
08:52 He's there staring at me.
08:53 It's very overwhelming.
08:55 You see so many people you know,
08:56 and it's kind of hard to take in,
08:58 'cause it's such a big night,
09:00 and there's so much going on.
09:01 I love fashion.
09:03 I love clothes.
09:04 I love getting to work with my hair and makeup team,
09:08 'cause they're so wonderful and creative,
09:10 but they're also friends,
09:11 and so it's like a very fun experience,
09:14 'cause you're kind of getting to hang out with your friends,
09:16 and then you're going out for the night.
09:18 This is a good one.
09:21 This is me on stage with Sam Claflin
09:23 and Josh Whitehouse and Sebastian,
09:26 and we're playing in our band, Daisy Jones and the Six.
09:30 Very dear to my heart,
09:32 and I love these people very much,
09:33 and all the music stuff we shot over a period of two weeks,
09:37 and we were doing night shoots,
09:39 so we were kind of up all night,
09:40 starting work at like seven
09:41 and going home at nine in the morning.
09:43 I spent like about a year working with coaches,
09:47 vocal coaches and guitar lessons and piano lessons,
09:51 and then spent a lot of time in the studio
09:54 with Blake Mills and Tony Berg,
09:56 and yeah, I mean, we had a lot of rehearsal.
09:58 It was like very intense,
10:01 and I certainly wasn't able to sing
10:05 the way I am able to in the show when we started.
10:09 This is weird.
10:11 I like wanna cry at all these photos,
10:14 and I sort of feel like it's like my eulogy.
10:16 It's really also fun to talk about photos in this way,
10:20 because I feel like my relationship with photos
10:22 is like scrolling an Instagram,
10:25 and a photograph used to be like a moment captured,
10:28 and it was this sort of spectacular thing
10:31 that you have this picture of this thing that happened,
10:34 and now I feel like our relationship with photos
10:36 is just like isn't as impactful,
10:38 and so to sit down and look at photos and go,
10:41 okay, to really have a moment with them is really special.
10:45 I'm really grateful for this experience,
10:48 and so thank you, Vanity Fair.
10:50 (upbeat music)
10:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]