Riley Keough on How She Craved a "Normal" Life Outside of Fame | The Drew Barrymore Show
Riley Keough sits down with Drew Barrymore to discuss the memoir she wrote with her mother Lisa Marie Presley, "From Here to the Great Unknown." Plus, Drew and Riley discuss how they both craved a more "normal" life as kids and how they dealt with chaos growing up. #RileyKeough
When you hear the word trust, are you triggered at all?
I am.
No, I'm not triggered by the word.
I think karmically you must have been born
with a very good set of judgment,
which I don't believe I was born with.
I think it's something I worked my whole life on.
Yeah.
And I feel like you were given that gift karmically
in the cosmos of something grounded and observant
and settled, because you have this way about you
that is calm.
Am I completely off base about this?
I, no, I think I am.
I think some of those things are true, yeah.
I think that I also grew up, you did too,
but in a situation where I would see
a lot of agendas and things.
And I think that my approach was just maybe different,
whereas I just kind of expected it
and didn't really, I don't know.
I just, I saw what was around sort of fame and power,
and it just sort of was what it was to me, and I.
I have hardly any famous friends.
I was also gonna say I was really lucky.
I had a lot of really great friends growing up,
girlfriends, who have been my friends
since I was three and four.
Me too, like lifelongers.
And there is so many things that are so relatable
in this book that were so universal
that really surprised me.
You don't need to be from a famous family
to have gone through a lot of the things
everybody's going through in this book.
And there's so much fun.
And it's like you're laughing now,
and that gives me permission, because as a mom,
I get torn about what's fun and funny
when you become a parent.
Like now looking back on it, I felt so self-critical
when I gave birth to my daughters,
because I was looking back at my own life
through the judgment of, I think, other people's eyes.
I think I picked someone to have kids with
that I knew came from an incredibly stable family.
I got excited by something that I felt
was more traditional, and then I really beat myself up
that I was so untraditional.
Yeah, I think that's really common
with mothers particularly.
You know?
How so?
Well, I think that there's an idea
of sort of what you're supposed to be as a mother,
whereas fathers sort of get left, you know,
they can do the bare minimum, and they're fine.
And creative license, like license to be who they are.
But you're right.
And I think that when you're a mother,
you kind of, especially if you're sort of like an artist
or a creative person, I think that it's, I don't know.
Those are the things that kind of give you life.
And I think that you kind of assume that,
for me, I can only speak for myself,
like I guess when I had my child,
I kind of had this idea of what motherhood would be like.
And then I would be at home wanting to bake cookies all day
and, you know, and sit at home all day.
And then that was really hard for me, you know?
I realized that like I need to write and to perform
and to do all these other things.
And I was really hard on myself for that, you know?
My daughter turned to me in bed last night.
She's 12.
And she said, mom, I really, I really, really want to act.
And I wanted so bad to indulge her in that moment
and give her what she wanted and needed.
But I went to fear because I am so scared
for my kids to have experiences like I had.
There's this voice of no.
Of mom guilt.
Make it safe, make it really normal
and full of traditions and really buckled down.
And so.
I really relate to this, by the way.
You do?
Because my life was so wild
that I really wanted like suburbia and like cookies
and like things to be very normal for my kids.
And I'm not that kind of person, you know?
When you had your daughter, Tupelo,
may I ask, and I don't know much about your husband.
And when you met him, what occurred for you to feel like?
I think, well, I had my mom in my head always saying
when I met, you know, when I was with your father,
I knew that I was meant to have kids with him.
So I think I had this idea that I would know
when it was the person that I was gonna have kids with.
And I did have that experience.
You did?
I did.
We were barely dating.
And we were on a road trip and I had a moment
where I kind of went, you know,
I think I'm gonna have children with this person.
And it felt like, I don't know,
it was sort of weird cosmic thing
that she also had with my dad, which was very cool.
And his name is Ben.
That's right.
Which is your brother's name.
Well, it's weirder because his sister's name is Storm.
My brother was Ben Storm.
I know.
And his brother's name is Danny, which is my dad's name.
Oh my God.
I know.