Lisa Marie Presley Was Humiliated by ‘Awkward and Embarrassing’ Kiss With Michael Jackson at the VMAs
Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson were briefly married in the 1990s. According to her mother, Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie had doubts throughout the marriage. He was gone often, and she didn’t like having to deal with some of the aspects of his fame. At the 1994 VMAs, Jackson brought Priscilla on stage and kissed her. Both Lisa Marie and Priscilla said she was not comfortable with this display of affection.
Lisa Marie Presley felt embarrassed by her kiss with Michael Jackson at the VMAs
Jackson and Lisa Marie tied the knot in May 1994. Several months later, he brought her onstage at the VMAs. As he spoke to the crowd, a visibly nervous Lisa Marie held his hand. He then kissed her.
“He knew I didn’t love that,” she told Oprah Winfrey, per The Washington Post. “I would be there, uncomfortably. And his hand was blue after we got off that stage. … I had squeezed it so hard. … But as his wife, I needed to do some things like that.”
Priscilla said she watched the moment on television and could tell Lisa was not comfortable.
“The marriage went truly public, of course, at the MTV Video Music Awards, when Michael brought Lisa onstage and gave her the infamous passionate kiss,” Priscilla wrote in her book Softly, as I Leave You. “It was awkward and embarrassing, and no one was more uncomfortable with it than Lisa.”
She said that both she and her daughter were not happy with Jackson.
“I was angry with him for ambushing Lisa like that in public,” she wrote. “When I asked Lisa about it, she cringed.”
She ended another marriage after he confessed his love for her
Lisa Marie met Jackson when she was still married to her first husband, Danny Keough. She decided to end the marriage when he confessed his love to her.
“Michael said,’ I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m completely in love with you. I want us to get married and for you to have my children,’” Lisa Marie wrote in From Here to the Great Unknown. “I didn’t say anything immediately, but then I said, ‘I’m really flattered, I can’t even talk.’ By then, I felt I was in love with him too.”
She filed for divorce and married Jackson just 20 days later.
Lisa Marie Presley divorced Michael Jackson in 1996
According to Priscilla, Jackson was “never around.” She also said that Jackson’s level of fame and the allegations of child sexual abuse against him eventually led Lisa Marie to end the marriage.
“Finally, she’d had enough,” Priscilla wrote. “She called me to tell me she wanted a divorce. She had begun to feel like the marriage was a setup. He didn’t want to be with her; he wanted to be with Elvis Presley’s daughter. If he’d wanted to be with her, he wouldn’t have been gone for most of their marriage.”
Priscilla believed that Elvis would have been relieved to learn the marriage was over.
