Riley Keough Explains Daughter’s Special Connection to Elvis Presley

In August of 2022, Riley Keough and her husband Ben Smith-Petersen quietly welcomed a baby girl via a surrogate. While most details about Elvis Presley's great-granddaughter remain private, Keough did share the special connection her daughter has to her grandfather.

Tupelo Storm Smith-Peterson is named after the King of Rock 'n' Roll's birthplace, Tupelo, Miss.

“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” the actress tells Vanity Fair. “I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something."

"Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.”

Baby Tupelo's name also honors Keough's late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, as the two share the same middle name. Benjamin died by suicide in 2020 at the age of 27.

The Daisy Jones & The Six actress, who suffers from Lyme disease, also opened up about choosing to use a surrogate.

“I think it’s a very cool, selfless, and incredible act that these women do to help other people," she gushes before explaining, "I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff.”

Baby Tupelo — Presley's only known great-grandchild — is Keough and Smith-Petersen's first child. The two met while on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road in 2013. The actress and stuntman hit it off and were married in 2015.

“I remember it so vividly, I just knew that we were going to have kids,” she recounts. “It was, in hindsight, very strange. I didn’t know how we’d get there, but we did.”