“””ITEM IS IN STOCK NOW”””

V145: IT’S TIME FOR CAILEE SPAENY

In the calm before the media storm, V sat down with the ‘Priscilla’ actor to gab about entertainment in the Southern Midwest, gaining the Coppolas’ affections, and stepping into the role of Hollywood’s most iconic leading women for her cover shoot

Fourteen is not an age most people are eager to revisit.

It is a time of doubting everything, reckoning with the sudden emergence of acne, hair, boobs (or lack thereof), and feeling so close to adulthood while still being, for all intents and purposes, a child. It’s the most fertile age for insecurity to blossom, yet it’s also when a lot of young people start to feel more certain in their voice and sense of self—however in flux that identity may be. When Priscilla Presley was fourteen, she met the biggest rockstar in the world, Elvis Presley, and convinced her parents to let her be with him. When Cailee Spaeny, the actor who portrayed Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s latest film, Priscilla, was fourteen, she had dropped out of school and, similarly, convinced her parents to let her perform. As Spaeny tells me, “Don’t underestimate a determined fourteen-year-old girl. They’re the most powerful thing on earth.”

In the eleven years since giving her parents the ultimatum, Spaeny has starred alongside A-listers like Dakota Johnson, Felicity Jones, and Kate Winslet, she closed Miu Miu’s SS24 runway (following supermodel Gigi Hadid), and now, she’s fulfilled one of her biggest dreams, playing the lead role in a Sofia Coppola film. Talking to her over Zoom—Spaeny tuned in from London the day after her runway debut—it’s obvious (and very charming) that she’s in disbelief over her newfound It-girl status. “Okay, cool girl,” she says when I tell her I’m tuning in from Manhattan’s East Village. I remind her that she’s about to fly to New York for the American premiere of her latest movie, Priscilla—arguably way cooler than mouse traps and pre-war plumbing—and she demures, “I’ll be slightly intimidated, but it should be fun.”

Throughout our conversation, Spaeny gushes the way any 25-year-old would gush if she were cast in a Coppola film, while still possessing a sense of pragmatism when it comes to the industry’s attention span. It’s refreshing. It’s real. It makes you wonder about her journey to Priscilla, and to stardom. Between her hotel room in London and my girlfriend’s apartment on 5th Street, we chat about the actress’ colorful life in Southern Missouri, IRL conversations with Priscilla Presley, life on a Sofia Coppola set (pickleball tournaments included), her tribute to the stars of yesteryear in her shoot with V, and the pep-talk she got from Gigi Hadid right before closing the Miu Miu show. When I ask how she feels about her impending rise, she cites the advice she got from Hadid about how to walk the runway: “Take in how the room smells, take in all the details. Because you don’t want to blank and not remember these moments.” Thanks, Gigi.

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