Fresh Air - Best Of: What's Next For Fox News? / Sofia Coppola

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

This week, Rupert Murdoch stepped down from his position as chair and CEO of Fox, and his son Lachlan replaced him. How might Fox change under Lachlan's leadership? And how has it already changed since Tucker Carlson was fired? Brian Stelter, author of the book Network of Lies, explains. Film critic Justin Chang reviews the black comedy May December, directed by Todd Haynes. Sofia Coppola talks about her new movie, Priscilla. It portrays the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley — from Priscilla's point of view. The two met when she was 14 and he was 24. Coppola makes films about the internal lives of young women, including The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and Lost in Translation. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From W.H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, I'm Tanya Mosley with Fresh Air Weekend. This week, Rupert Murdoch stepped down from his position as chair and CEO of Fox, and his son Lachlan replaced him. How could Fox change under Lachlan's leadership, and how has it already changed since Tucker Carlson was fired? We discuss all of that with Brian Stelter, author of the new book Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. Also, Sofia Coppola. Her new movie is about the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley from Priscilla's point of view. The two met when she was 14 and he was 24. Coppola's other movies include The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette,

and Lost in Translation, which she won an Oscar for in 2003. And Justin Chang reviews the new Netflix thriller, The Killer. from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has today's first interview. I'll let her introduce it. What's changing at Fox News? It paid a settlement of more than $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems. Fox fired its popular host, Tucker Carlson. This week, Rupert Murdoch officially hands over the titles Chair of Fox Corp., Fox's Broadcast Arm, and News Corp., which publishes newspapers and books. My guest, Brian Stelter, is the author

of the new book, Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. It's a follow-up to Stelter's best-selling 2020 book about Fox called Hoax. The new book is about how Fox helped spread the lie that Trump won the election. It also examines the secrets that were exposed about what Fox hosts and executives really thought about the conspiracy theories spread on Fox. Part of the book's focus is on Tucker Carlson, who was fired just after Fox settled with Dominion. Dominion Voting Systems was suing Fox for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, alleging that Dominion rigged its voting machine so that Biden would win. Just before the trial was about to start, Fox decided to settle, presumably to prevent Dominion lawyers from exposing private communications from Fox News hosts and executives, revealing their hypocrisies. Stelter is the former chief media correspondent for CNN and hosted CNN's former Sunday program about the media called Reliable Sources.

Before that, he was a media reporter for The New York Times. He's now a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the podcast Inside the Hive. He's a producer on the Apple TV Plus series The Morning Show, which is inspired by his first book, Top of the Morning. Brian Stelter, welcome back to Fresh Air. Your book is really interesting, so thank you for coming back to our show. It's a great privilege. Thank you.

So this week is a big transition week from Rupert Murdoch to his son Lachlan taking over the reins. How do they compare in terms of their politics and management style and goals for Fox? Well, Rupert Murdoch is, in his heart, a newspaper man. He believes he is a journalist. Yes, he comes at it from the right. He has certain very strongly held opinions. But he deeply cares about his newspapers and to some degree Fox News. His son Lachlan is, number one, in some ways more conservative, and number two, much more business-minded.

He's not nearly as interested in politics. He's not nearly as interested in the polling. He's a lot more interested in how much money he can rake in from campaign ad spending at his stations and on Fox News. So he comes to this as a businessman. And I suspect that means Fox is going to continue to be this beating heart of the GOP, supporting whoever becomes a nominee, most likely Trump this year. Well, if Lachlan is focused on advertising, I mean, Tucker Carlson's extremism cost the network a lot of money. A lot of the sponsors pulled out. They had to rely on MyPillow as a primary sponsor. And that's one of the reasons why Lachlan eventually decided to cut ties with Tucker and fired him last August by canceling his show. It was a cold-hearted business

calculation. And we can talk about all the reasons why it eventually happened. But I think it goes to show that Lachlan Murdoch, in the words of one source, is minimizing headaches and maximizing profits. He's going to do whatever the audience really wants as long as it's not going to cause lots of headaches. And the thing about Tara Carlson is he was causing a lot of headaches. What about Lachlan's brother, James? What's his relation to Fox News now and to his family?

Anyone who's watched Succession has a little bit of a sense of this, because this is a very real drama. James is the more liberal son. He is the outcast at the moment. He is not involved at all in the family businesses. He's chosen to break ties from Fox and News Corp, in part because he's horrified by the content on Fox News. He says to his friends that it's poisoning America. He has a vision for what he would want Fox News to be. He would want to drag it back toward reality, back toward at least an imagined middle ground where facts and journalism were prioritized over the propaganda that currently airs. But right now, James has no ability to do that. He is, as I said, he's on the outside. He has a vote in the Murdoch family trust. So in the event of Rupert's death, James will have an opportunity to try to take over, will try to team up with his sisters and take control of Fox Corporation. But for now, that's just in the distant horizon. For now, this is Lachlan's company. So there's, what, eight votes in the trust, in the Murdoch trust? That's right. There's eight votes. And right now, Rupert Murdoch has four of those eight, which is how he maintains control.

So even though we're going to hear this week about his stepping aside, becoming chairman emeritus, what some of his aides call semi-retirement, I would really emphasize the word semi, because Rupert is going to remain involved in various ways. What is Fox now? Because Murdoch sold most of 20th Century Fox to Disney at the end of 2017 for $71 billion. And the children got, like, how many billions? Close to $2 billion each, which is why someone like James Murdoch is now off making his own investments, creating his own media company. Now, that $2 billion, that was important, you know,

for Rupert to try to give stability to his children. But I also think that Disney deal is really important in retrospect to realize Rupert sold at basically the top of the market. Listen to the conversation now five years later about cable assets, about broadcast, about the dying broadcast business, about streaming, the struggles to make streaming profitable. Rupert, for all of his faults, he seemed to see this coming. And he was able to sell his assets to Disney and get out of those businesses at a really prime time. Now, of course, they still have Fox News and they have Fox Sports and some other assets. But Fox News is the largest profit driver by far. Fox News is what keeps them

in their mansions and on their helicopters. What lawsuits is Fox facing now? Possibly the largest lawsuit is by Smartmatic. That's one of those voting technology companies that I had never heard of until the 2020 election. Maybe you hadn't either. You know, these relatively obscure companies like Dominion and Smartmatic, these are the companies that help make our elections run, that provide the machines and the software to tally the votes. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories about both companies at the end of 2020. One of the

claims was that they were actually the same company when in fact they are not. So Dominion was able to very easily prove that the smears that aired on Fox were in fact lies. And Accord in Delaware affirmed that earlier this year. All that stuff, it was just made up. Dominion, thus, had a lot of leverage to win a settlement and get almost $800 million out of Fox. But Smartmatic is asking for even more. Smartmatic is demanding $2.6 billion, and that case is still winding its way through the courts. There's individuals suing Fox, too. That's right. Individuals like Ray Epps.

He was at the Capitol during the riot on January 6th. He has pled guilty to an offense there. But for many months, Tucker Carlson, and to some extent others on Fox, but mostly Carlson, spread a conspiracy theory that actually Ray Epps was a government agent or a plant or a secret federal agent. So that conspiracy theory was the reason why Ray Epps sued earlier this year for defamation. And that's not the only defamation case by an individual. There are multiple cases by individuals and there are shareholder lawsuits against the Fox Board of Directors for failing to manage and avoid these embarrassing payouts and scandals. It is a legal thicket for Fox. Trump is now indicted on several charges. There's different cases against him.

There are also indicted and unindicted co-conspirators who are cited. Among them, who are some of the ones who have been Fox News regulars? Right. Two of the names that come to mind right away are Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. When I read through the various indictments over the summer, I realized these are, you know, these are Fox stars. These are Fox personalities who fed Trump the lie that then led to all of these alleged crimes. You know, the big lie didn't come out of nowhere, didn't come out of thin air. It was made to exist. It happened on the very same weekend that NPR and all the major networks projected that Biden had won the presidency and that Trump had lost the presidency. The very next day, Maria Bartiromo and Sidney Powell on Fox News seeded the story about Dominion that Trump later picked up and ran with. And so when you look at

the Georgia indictment and you have this breach of voting systems in Coffey County, Georgia, actual physical action taken trying to interfere with the election. They were going after Dominion machines. So I argue in Network of Lies, all these indictments lead back in one way or another to the Fox machine and what was being said on the air. So Rudy, Sidney Powell, these are the kinds of guests that were telling the lie-filled story on the air back at the time. Okay. You mentioned that the Dominion conspiracy theory basically started on Fox. The conspiracy theory is that Dominion machines were really controlled and manipulated by outside sources. And the goal was to deliver the election to Biden by tampering with the machines. So and you say this conspiracy theory started on Maria Bartiromo's

show. How exactly did it start? Once Biden was projected to be president-elect, Trump and his allies needed to tell a new story. They needed to say that it was stolen. But how? Who stole what? How? Well, they needed to come up with a villain. And Dominion, and to some degree Smartmatic, were the villains. Sidney Powell, who was working with Trump at the time as a Trump-aligned lawyer, you know, they later claimed that she was never officially on the legal team, but she clearly said she was, acted like she was. Trump was in touch with her. On the day that Biden was named president-elect, Sidney Powell received an email from a random woman in Minnesota. This woman admitted that some of her own ideas were wackadoodle. She claimed, the wind tells me I'm a ghost. There were all sorts of red flags in this long email that Sidney Powell received.

But Sidney Powell took this email because it alleged election fraud info. It alleged wrongdoing by Dominion. It had all sorts of allegations against Nancy Pelosi and others. She forwarded this email to Maria Bartiromo because she was going to be on with Maria the next morning. And then Maria Bartiromo sent it over to Eric Trump. So you have all of a sudden this kooky theory about Dominion has now reached the Trump family orbit. So it's Sunday morning, November 8th. Maria Bartiromo is starting her show. She's in denial about Trump's loss. She desperately wants Trump to be reelected. She's hearing from her fellow conspiracy theorist friends

about all sorts of ways to overturn the results and give, you know, false hope to millions of people. So she's interviewing Sidney Powell on the air, and Bartiromo basically looks down and reads almost word for word from this, again, completely random, totally unsubstantiated, pretty kooky email from a viewer in Minnesota, full of falsehoods, easily disproven charges. But she's reading it out loud on air, asking Sidney Powell to react, queuing up Sidney Powell to tell a story about the villain, about the wrongdoers, about the company that stole the election. And Terry, it was just amazing for me to reconstruct this three years later and realize it happened right out in public view. This defamation, this

creation of a big lie that still infects our politics to this day. The entire predicate for Trump's reelection campaign is that it was stolen from him in 2020. And it all starts from a random chain email that wasn't fact-checked, that wasn't investigated by Fox, that was just slopped onto the air. How much do you know about who that woman was who sent the email? Her name is Marlene Bourne, and the Daily Beast was able to follow up with her after this all became public. She said she, quote, based her now nationally prominent ideas about election fraud on a wide variety of sources, including hidden messages she detects in films, song lyrics she hears on the radio, and overheard conversations she hears while in line at the supermarket checkout. Now, this was an incredible discovery on the part of the Dominion lawyers. Because, you know, after they sued Fox and they went to the

discovery process, and they were reviewing all these emails and text messages, they searched for the word Dominion inside Fox's corporate email. They wanted to know who was emailing, who was talking about Dominion before the company was smeared for the first time. And they only found this one email. That's the only thing they found. One email from a woman in Minnesota with a conspiracy theory about Dominion and Nancy Pelosi. That's all they found. It wasn't as if there was any legitimate evidence, any real investigation, any due diligence. And I'll tell you, when the lawyers found this, they realized they had an even stronger case than they originally thought. Was the premise that it all started like you just described on Maria Bartiromo's show because of this wacky email by one woman that Sidney Powell received?

Did Fox executives or hosts or Maria herself contest that? No. Bartiromo was asked about this under oath during her Dominion deposition. She said she didn't know who this person was. She acted like it didn't really matter. But it mattered a lot because this was like the patient zero in this coming contagion that was going to infect the entire network. There was no legitimate evidence of wrongdoing. There wasn't any follow-up before

the segment. You know, this is the worst of television news. It's putting on a guest, letting them say whatever BS they want, no vetting, no verification ahead of time. And it matters a great deal when the president of the United States is watching, because then within days, he starts spreading the lies about Dominion also. And these lies, of course, they are a part of a larger story that gets us to January 6th and gets us into the election denialism that exists today. Trump last weekend said, I'm a very proud election denier. He said it during the same speech when he talked about trying to get rid of the vermin that has infected the United States, really fascist rhetoric.

But he talks about being a proud election denier. And of course, that is what led to the bloodstained riot on Capitol Hill on January 6. All of these ideas about someone doing the stealing, right, Dominion in this case, had very dire consequences. We're listening to Terry's conversation with Brian Stelter. His new book is called Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Brian Stelter. His new book is called Network of Lies, The Epic Saga, Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy.

Brian Stelter was the former host of CNN's Reliable Sources, a weekly show about the media. Before that, he was a media reporter for the New York Times. He's now a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the podcast Inside the Hive. So Tucker Carlson was actually fired from Fox the week after Fox settled with Dominion by paying $787 million plus to Dominion and the settlement. You say that there's more than one reason that Tucker Carlson was fired. So tell us some of the reasons. It's frustrating that Fox never actually shared any rationale or any reason.

Because in that information vacuum, conspiracy theories immediately started to form. And some of those theories were leaked by Tucker and his producers. They wanted various ideas out there about why Fox had stabbed him in the back. One theory was about Rupert Murdoch's brief engagement to a Tucker Carlson fan, who he then broke it off with. Another theory was that the Murdochs didn't like Tucker Carlson's pro-Russia, pro-Putin rhetoric on the air. There were all these theories, but the wildest one was that Tucker Carlson was somehow fired because of Dominion. Carlson even said this on the record. He said, my firing was a condition of the settlement. And there is not only no evidence for that, there's ample evidence to

the contrary. I've walked all the way around this story, Terry, interviewed almost everybody that was actually in the room for the negotiations. Carlson's name never came up. If anything, Dominion liked Tucker Carlson. He was going to be a star witness for Dominion because of the way that he trashed Sidney Powell on his show. So Carlson has been out there trying to blame Dominion. So that's why I ended up doing so much reporting about Tucker for this new book. I wanted to hear the real reasons why he was canceled.

And I ended up hearing dozens of them. There was so much bad behavior internally. Carlson really became unglued during his six years as a primetime host. You know, it's very much an Icarus story, flying too close to the sun. And now, ultimately, he's off on Twitter, or what it's called now, X. He's now making videos, but he's very much a diminished figure ever since he was canceled. Tucker Carlson created the image of himself as like man of the people fighting the elites.

And as you point out in your book, he's one of the elites. He grew up in a wealthy family. His mother's family had money. His stepmother was part of the Swanson Foods family. So she had a lot of money. So is a guy who grew up as a heir to the Swanson TV dinner empire, who has an island in the middle of a lake in Maine where he lives half the year, where he has a compound in Florida the other half of the year. He lived in Washington for decades, and he's an elite by any definition of the word. But the story he tells is a story similar to Trump's in that he can tell the truth about the way the world works because he comes from that world. Because he comes from an elite family, he has an elite background. He can then expose them. Again, I think it ultimately ends

up being quite hollow, but he claims he has access to secret knowledge that others are afraid to share. And that narrative, that tale he tells, it is very alluring and arousing to certain right-wing ears. His audience may not have known this, but he often did his Fox News show from personal studios that he had in his summer home in Maine and his winter retreat in Florida. So Fox paid for those studios, right? They were in his homes or compounds, but Fox outfitted them. Why do you think that's significant? It mattered because it changed him. Carlson's remoteness separated him from people and events. It separated him from the diversity of the real world. You know, when he started his primetime show on Fox, he was based in Washington. He was at the Fox Bureau in D.C.

He would see his producers in person all the time. But over time, he decided to move out of Washington in part because of protesters who showed up at his house one night. He retreated to Maine and Florida. He hosted his show basically from home all the time. He rarely had guests on set for long stretches of time. I think he was isolated in almost every sense of the word. And I had an ex-colleague of his say to me, you know, his world really shrank and he again to celebrities of various kinds, including television stars. I think he became really, really high on his own supply. And yet at the same time, he would tell his producers, treat every show like it's your last. I think that's because, in the words of one of his producers, we knew we were burning too bright. It wasn't going to end well. You know, something I find interesting, you just talked about how Tucker Carlson moved to Maine and Florida after an attempt to invade his home. And a lot of the things he said on the air led to attacks on other people, people who he considered villains. Their lives were at stake. Their families' lives were

threatened. But when it happened to him, he got out of town. That's right. He had the resources to up and leave. I do think the protest at his home that night was a big deal. I also think he did exaggerate some elements of it. The police report does not match up with his version of events. But it did rattle him to have protesters at his door. And look, I get it. It's one thing for Tucker to send me a dozen donuts as a prank, as he did one day. It's another thing when a right-wing activist shows up in your basement, as happened to me in New York City one day, shows up in your basement with a camera and a microphone pestering you with questions about some crazy conspiracy

theory. It can be unnerving when the political discourse that's only happening on your television set or in front of the camera suddenly invades your personal life and your personal space. But I think your point is the crucial one. This happened all the time to subjects and targets of his show, people with far fewer resources than he has. So Jesse Waters replaced Tucker Carlson on the air. What does his show look like? How does it compare to Tucker's show? I would say Waters is more of a mainline Republican. He's not a part of the so-called new right, the way that Carlson is.

He's not as isolationist, for example, when it comes to U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine. So in some ways, Waters is a little bit more of a, I hate to use the word mainstream, because I think it's not an appropriate word for the Republican Party in 2023, but he is somewhat more mainstream than Carlson was. That said, Waters has never met a conspiracy theory that he didn't like. He routinely assails Democrats as the enemy. He barely even refers to Biden by his last name. Of course, he prefers Joe, right, as an insult. So you have that kind of,

what I think is a very extremist posture that's now just baked in and assumed to be the norm all across Fox. Brian Stelter, thank you so much for talking with us. Thanks so much. Brian Stelter's new book is called Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. He spoke with Terry Gross. In The Killer, Michael Fassbender stars as a globetrotting hitman who's forced to go on the run after botching his latest job. It's the newest thriller from David Fincher, director of movies like Fight Club and Gone Girl. The Killer begins streaming on Netflix today. Here's Justin's review.

David Fincher has had murder on his mind for so long, in thrillers like Seven, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that you almost have to laugh at his new movie's no-nonsense title, The Killer. It's adapted from a French graphic novel series by Alexis Matz-Nolant and Luc Jacamont about a hitman played here with cool precision by Michael Fassbender. We never learn the killer's name. He has countless aliases and fake passports, which he uses to travel the globe, killing rich, powerful people at the behest of other rich, powerful people. He isn't troubled by questions of motive, let alone morality. For him, killing is just a job, one that demands the utmost commitment, patience, and discipline, as he tells us in the acidly funny voiceover narration that runs through the movie.

Skepticism is often mistaken for cynicism. Most people refuse to believe that the great beyond is no more than a cold, infinite void. But I accept it, along with the freedom that comes from acknowledging that truth. I've come to realize that the moment when it's time to act is not when risk is greatest. The real problems arise in the days, hours, and minutes leading up to the task. And the minutes, hours, and days after. It all comes down to preparation, attention to detail,

redundancies, redundancies, and redundancies. The movie begins in Paris, where the killer has been hiding out for days in an empty WeWork space, waiting for his target, who lives in a swanky apartment across

the street. We follow every detail of the killer's routine, the carefully scheduled naps, the fast food runs, the yoga stretches he does to stay limber. He listens to the Smiths, his favorite band, and he uses a watch to monitor his pulse. His heart rate needs to be below 60 beats per minute when the time finally comes to pull the trigger. But in a rare moment of bad luck for him, this particular job goes horribly awry, and he misses his mark. Amid the bloody fallout,

he somehow manages a clean getaway. There's a beautifully edited sequence of Fassbender speeding through Paris at night on his motorcycle, discarding pieces of his rifle in different trash bins, while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's haunting electronic score surges in the background. But the consequences of his mistake are immediate and devastating. Arriving back at his hideaway in the Dominican Republic, he finds that assailants have broken in and attacked his girlfriend, who barely managed to survive and is now hospitalized. The killer's employers, trying to mollify their disgruntled

client, have clearly turned the tables on him, and he decides to repay them in kind, killing something that's so impersonal for him has suddenly become deeply personal. The plot, as laid out in Andrew Kevin Walker's perfectly paced script, is fairly standard revenge thriller business. The killer's mission takes him to cities including New Orleans, New York, and Chicago, where he breaks into his employer's office, gathers information, and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. But the beauty of Fincher's filmmaking, as always, is in the ultra-meticulous details. This is a process movie in which the mundane becomes mesmerizing. The violence is startling but relatively brief.

We spend a lot more time watching the killer make supply runs to hardware stores, Amazon delivery lockers, and his own personal storage units around the country. As in Fincher's 1999 classic, Fight Club, there's a whiff of late capitalist satire here. After all, what is the killer but just another participant in the gig economy, only with above-average pay and especially lethal occupational hazards? As he goes about his mission, the killer keeps repeating the same mantras, stick to the plan, forbid empathy. The viewer, however, may feel sorry for some of the unlucky few who find themselves in the killer's sights. Okay, maybe not the brute, a hulking adversary who gets taken down in one bone-crunching, furniture-smashing action set piece. But you

can't help but feel for a rival assassin played to perfection by Tilda Swinton in one exquisitely written and directed scene. Fassbender's performance is also a thing of chilled beauty. Like Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 hitman classic Le Samouraï, he gives a cipher-like man of action an undeniable glimmer of soul. Even as he dispenses his glib aphorisms and spills his trade secrets in his running commentary, Fassbender's killer retains a crucial air of mystery. No matter how carefully he plots his every move, he still proves capable of surprising himself and us. I'm not suggesting his story cries out for a sequel, but by the time this very dark comedy reaches its strangely sunny

ending, you're curious to see what job this killer, and Fincher himself, might take on next. Justin Chang is film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed The Killer, directed by David Fincher. Coming up, Sofia Coppola. She talks about her new movie Priscilla, which looks at the love affair and age difference between Elvis and Priscilla Presley from Priscilla's point of view.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. When Priscilla Beaulieu met and married Elvis Presley, she was living every teenage girl's dream. And for years in films, television, and music, their relationship was romanticized, even after their divorce and Elvis' death. But in most depictions, Elvis was at the center of the story, with little interrogation of their age difference,

Elvis being 24 and Priscilla just 14 years old when they met. In the new movie Priscilla, filmmaker Sofia Coppola uses her signature style to look at their love affair from Priscilla's vantage point, a teenager coming of age during her romance with Elvis. Coppola adapted the story from Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me. It is Coppola's the story from Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. It is Coppola's eighth feature film. Some of her others include The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and Lost in Translation, which she won an Oscar for in 2003 for Best Original Screenplay. Sophia Coppola, welcome back to Fresh Air.

It really seems like we can never get enough of the phenomenon that was Elvis. I mean, we just keep telling variations of his story over and over. But there is something so fresh about what you have done here by centering Priscilla. And I just want to start with talking a little bit about what it was about this story that made you decide that you wanted to tell it? Thank you. Yeah, I think like you were saying, Elvis and Priscilla are such huge figures in American culture and folklore. It's kind of the closest we have to royalty. And I realized when I was reading her book how little we know about her. I just, you know, there's these images in my mind of her

and her cat eyeliner and her big hair and beauty and glamour. But I didn't know that much really about her story. I knew she was much younger. So when I read Priscilla's book, I was really surprised that she was living in Graceland while she was in high school. And I thought, God, all the things we have to go through as a teenager, she was going through while she was living in Graceland with Elvis. And that's just at the time in your life when you're trying to figure out your identity and all these kind of big stages in your life.

And that she, her book was really relatable because she goes through things that, you know, most girls go through as you grow up, but in such an unusual setting. That was such a surprising detail to know that she was in high school living with Elvis. How much did Priscilla Presley have on the film storyline? I see that she was one of the executive producers.

I approached her and asked her if I could option the rights to her book to make a film of it. And she thought about it and agreed because she said that she liked my work and knew that I had a sensitive approach. And she was still very protective, obviously, of the story. And it's very, you know, her life and it's private. But she wrote this book and so she agreed. And then she came on as an executive producer. So she was available to me to answer questions and went through the script. And it was really important for me that she felt good about the film, that she felt like it represented her story. So it was the first time that I had to think about not only what I wanted to express as an artist, but also

taking into consideration how to make sure that it was respectful of her and accurate to her experience. So Priscilla and Elvis met each other in Germany. He was stationed there. Her parents were there. That's why she was there. Her parents were apprehensive as any parents would be. And Priscilla says they gave in and let her see Elvis because she threatened to run away if they didn't. But you also reveal in this very subtle way something else. And that's the power of celebrity, how we can be wooed by a pop star like Elvis. But then there was another part of it that I was really fascinated by. And it's like how members of a network can influence each other. And in this case, it was the military.

Was that fascinating to you? Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Because I think before they met him, they were like, of course, no way. Absolutely not. You know, they were protective parents. But then he came in full uniform with, you know, very respectful and spoke to her father. And there was that man-to-man military code as well as them being so charmed by him. I think he must have been so charismatic and, you know, lovable. And, you know, they didn't strike me from what she said

and what I've read, the kind of parents that were pushing their kid to try to get into Hollywood, like you've heard, you know, some stories. I felt like they were productive, but that they were, you know, charmed by him and let up. But I saw that there was a lot of tension of that thing of, you know, which I can imagine as a mother of a teen, when your kid is convinced that their whole life will fall apart if they don't get what they want and you're having to balance that with what's, you know, healthy for them. So I can imagine what a dilemma,

but it's hard to imagine ever letting your kid go into, you know, move in with a pop star. A pop star, a man, it doesn't matter. Of course, with today's eyes, most of us would say Elvis groomed Priscilla. And that really comes across in the film. But it's also really remarkable to me that somehow you made a world where there's no judgment in the telling of the story. Elvis is a flawed character,

but there's no indictment. And I'm just wondering if it was tricky to do because the mythology around him is so strong. Well, I'm glad you say that because I was trying to handle that delicately and sensitively. And I always went back to Priscilla's story. And I felt like my role was just to explain her experience and always go through her point of view and what it was like for her at that age as a teenager. Imagine if this huge pop star that you have a crush on or the sexiest man alive picks you out and the thrill and what she's feeling and not to look at it from any other viewpoint. Elvis' estate denied the right to use his music. And it kind of seems like that ended up working in your favor. I didn't actually even realize it until after I left the

theater. Oh, that's good. Yeah. How did you work around that? You know, I always knew that we might not be able to. So there were a couple of his songs that I'd wanted to use, but I always knew that we might have to have backup plans and figure something else out. And because the focus is her story, it's kind of cool that there isn't even Elvis music in it. But I would have liked to have – there's a song, Pocket Full of Rainbows, of his that I love that I listened to a lot during filming that I wanted to use. But yeah, no, I'd heard that they're very, you know, controlling about the material made on him. And they like to, that they participate in things that they originate. So I understand that they don't want someone else doing their version. But I thought, you know,

with Priscilla being such a part of the story that we might have access. But I, when we started thinking about the soundtrack, she talks about Venus playing in the diner when she first meets the friend of Elvis who brings her over. And so I started listening to that. And that started to be the beginning of our soundtrack with my husband's band, Phoenix, worked with me. And they thought of doing an instrumental version that became her kind of little girl theme song in the first part of the story. And then it evolves. And the whole setting of 60s Memphis was something exciting

for me because it's sort of exotic. It's not anything familiar with my upbringing. Yeah. This music wasn't the type of music that you grew up listening to, but you are known for using music in a very interesting way to kind of use contemporary music to go back in time or different unexpected uses of music. Was there anything in particular with this film that you were like, I think I want to try this now that we know we can't use Elvis, Elvis's music? Yeah, to me, it was just going into that era. I didn't listen to a lot of that music growing up, but I loved, I always loved girl groups and Phil Spector. So that was familiar to me. And so I thought about, that's my favorite of that era. And there's

something about the Phil Spector sound that has like a grandeur and this big production and kind of swelling and strings. It's really romantic. And I wanted the story to be ultra romantic of her, you know, first teen love and sort of this fairy tale. It looks, you know, perfect on the outside and then it sort of melts in the reality of when she goes into this world. And it has Alice in Wonderland feeling to me, too, her time in Graceland. I see that, yep. So I was thinking about that kind of Phil Spector sound, and then I remember that Ramones recorded an album with him, and I love that song. So to me, they all have that kind of, that through line of a sound in common. But I always, to me, it's always important that the emotion, that the music underlines the emotion.

And when Phoenix suggested Crimson and Clover, like, to me, it was such a goosebumps moment after her first kiss that it has to be really epic. So it was really fun to piece it together. This was something that felt like maybe an evolution to the stories that you tell because basically she's a young woman who outgrows, I mean, she's outgrowing her teenage fantasy. She finds a way to free herself from this larger than life man. And so many of your other movies, I'm thinking about Marie Antoinette, for instance, it acknowledges the powerful men, but the women are really never able to get away. Was that something you identified for yourself in this film and in the storyline, you being interested in it? Yeah, I loved that was a big part of it to me that she

left. I was so struck by that, especially at that time. It was so much harder than it is today. And I, you know, I have friends, their mothers went through divorce in the early 70s and how difficult it was to divorce a powerful man, especially she had no income of her own and to have that strength that she knew that she had to find her own identity outside of him and, you know, make the life that was right for her and her daughter. I was really impressed by that. Hair and makeup played such a huge part in us understanding where we were in the story as well and watching the film and really the story of them, period. Like when you look back at photos and video, we always can orient ourselves based on how they look. It was, of course, it's always fascinating how interested and involved Elvis was in Priscilla's look, her hair and her makeup and her clothes. Were there any other surprises

in the way Elvis perceived or valued aesthetics or Priscilla's look that really stood out to you? She talks a lot about that in the book and we show in the film. Like he had really definite ideas of how she should look. And she was almost like this doll to him. And she, I think at first it was fun. You know, he would take her to these stores with glamorous dresses and intimidating, but, you know, exciting. And then like trying to, I know that thing when you're young, you're trying to be more grown up or fit in with the older kids. And so I, you know, approached it like that. But yeah, he was so particular from his experience in movies,

you know, about makeup and whatever. So she was really trying to fit in, as you said, in that world. And it was so helpful to see all these photos of her in the different eras and how tall, sometimes the hair would remind me of Marie Antoinette. Like the hair got really tall and she's so known for that cat eyeliner. One of the details from the book that I loved that is in the film

was that she was putting on her false eyelashes, that she was going into labor for her baby. Yeah, just the commitment to glamour at all times. I think she was always done. I don't think she ever went downstairs without full hair and makeup and dressed completely. And she said he always came down in a full outfit. Like there was no lounging around and outside. That also sounds like something of the time. People just dressed all the time too. Yeah. People dress up to travel. And I love that the bags match the shoes. And yeah, it was such a different

era. So it was fun to recreate that. You remarked, Sophia, that you and Priscilla have some similarities in that you both grew up in a bubble of celebrity, of course, in different ways, with you being the daughter of famous filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. What are the parts of Priscilla's story that felt familiar in your own life? Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine anything on the scale of what she went through to be around, you know, someone so famous. And that must have been such a shock because her childhood was nothing like that before. You know, I know what it's like, the difference between a celebrated public person and then in private they're a normal person.

And I'm seeing the way people acted around my dad or going to the Cannes Film Festival as a kid. So I had some sense of how people act around celebrity and, of course, nothing to the scale of what Priscilla experienced. And I remember talking to my mom about how, you know, some of her frustrations of being a woman of that era. And it interested me because Priscilla was the same generation of my mom about how, you know, some of her frustrations of being a woman of that era. And it interested me because Priscilla was the same generation of my mom. And the idea that, you know, my mom said that you were, you know, to have a successful husband and a beautiful home that was supposed to be enough to fulfill a woman. And she, you know, felt so confused that she had, you know, creative expression that she wanted to realize. And, you know, what was wrong with her that she wasn't happy with just, you know, having a family and a beautiful home. And just to know how different the roles of women are.

And when Elvis tells Priscilla she wants to get a job and he says, no, I need you to stay at home. Right. And that that was just what was expected of women at that time. Do you see your mom differently now that you're a parent? Your mom traveled with your dad when he made films. And do you have thoughts on what that must have been like for her? Yeah. I appreciate she always brought all her stuff with us. We lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma during the Outsiders. And we weren't there that long, maybe like six months.

And she brought all my furniture and all my stuff and like hamster cages, like everything. And I just think like so that I – she always kept our childhood really grounded. And I feel so grateful to that because it must have been a pain like that she that she really um kind of what like you know would go to extreme lengths to make sure that we felt like we were at home wherever we were right because your father as um a very successful filmmaker traveled a lot of places and you all always traveled with him that was something that was important to him yeah we always went on location which was always fun and exciting because we lived in all these places but i i was homesick, too, and I would miss, you know, we would go to local schools, too, so I was always lost at school. But it was, yeah, it was always an adventure. And it related to Priscilla being an Army brat because that's how I grew up, always going to be the new kid at school, so I could relate to that. And now I'm so grateful that they brought me to set all the time because that's how I learned how to make movies. I know you and your father talked a lot about filmmaking early on. Do you all still talk about it? Yeah, it's really impressive that he never tires of this

object. He's still so enthusiastic. And every time I see him, he's like, I'm recutting one of my, right now he's recutting one from the heart and he's like discovered something new about editing like he's I've just never seen someone that's so excited about the medium that he's working in so he's really given that love to us you know what's really interesting is um this is the fourth time that you've been on fresh air and it is so it was great actually to to listen back to your old interviews because it really feels like we're following you through every stage of your career. You're very far from the nepotism baby moniker. I mean, you have a name in your own right. I mean, I'm just wondering if you're looking at your career in phases, what phase would you say that you're in now?

Yeah, you know, I don't, usually I'm just so busy trying to make stuff and fighting to get it made that I don't pause and look at it. Like, wow, I have a whole body of work I didn't realize. Like, you don't usually sit back and see that. But yeah, I'm so grateful because it was really, I remember it was a lot of work and really daunting in my beginning of my career to be taken seriously and to make a name for myself. And I was dismissed a lot, and I just kind of ignored it and kept going. And so to be at this point where people respect my work and see me that way is really gratifying. And that's why I get annoyed with the Nepo baby thing, because I worked really hard to be seen as my own person,

and it means a lot to me. Sophia Coppola, I really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. It's been great to talk to you. I appreciate it. Sophia Coppola's new movie is Priscilla. Fresh Air Weekend was produced this week by Heidi Saman. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers,

Roberta Shorrock, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Seth Kelly, and Susan Ngakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.