Nearly one year after becoming a mom, Riley Keough is opening up about her decision to welcome her first baby — daughter Tupelo Storm — via surrogate.
“I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff,” Keough, 34, explained in her September 2023 Vanity Fair cover story, published online Tuesday, August 8. (The actress has previously been candid about battling Lyme disease.)
Us Weekly confirmed in January that Keough and her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, secretly welcomed a baby girl. The couple got engaged in 2014, tying the knot one year later.
Both Keough and Smith-Petersen have been tight-lipped about their path to parenthood. In March, Keough opened up for the first time about being a mom, revealing to Interview magazine that her daughter arrived in 2022.
While chatting with Vanity Fair, Keough shed additional light on the surrogacy process, gushing, “I think it’s a very cool, selfless, and incredible act that these women do to help other people.”
The Daisy Jones & the Six star went on to describe the special connection her daughter’s name has to her family’s legacy. Keough’s grandfather Elvis Presley hails from Tupelo, Mississippi, and she initially thought the reference might fly under the radar.
“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” she told the outlet. “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 [in 2022], it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.”
Along with honoring Presley, Keough included an homage to her late brother, Benjamin Storm, with her daughter’s middle name. (Benjamin died by suicide in 2020 at age 27.)
While her name is tied to Keough’s side of the family, Tupelo bares a stronger physical resemblance to her father. “She’s literally like someone shrunk my husband and that’s our baby,” the Emmy nominee said, teasing that she sees herself in one single curl on her daughter’s head.
Keough got emotional while discussing her vision for herself as a mom. “This is the thing in my life so far that I have really wanted to, quote-unquote, get right,” she explained. “I don’t think you ever can be a perfect parent, but I would like to be the best mom for her that I can be. That’s … very important to me.”
Less than six months after Tupelo was born, Keough’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died at age 54 in January after suffering cardiac arrest. An autopsy report later revealed that Lisa Marie’s death was caused by “small bowel obstruction caused by scar tissue that developed after a previous bariatric surgery.”
A funeral service was held for Lisa Marie at the Graceland estate in Tennessee weeks after her death. During the ceremony, Smith-Petersen read a eulogy penned by his wife.
“Thank you for being my mother in this life. I am eternally grateful to have spent 33 years with you,” the tribute began. “I’m certain I chose the best mother for me in this world and I knew that as far back as I can remember you. … I remember everything.”
Keough’s message continued: “I remember how it felt to be loved by the most loving mother I’ve ever known. … Thank you for showing me that love is the only thing that matters in this life. I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters.”
