In the movie, Priscilla lives with her parents in Germany, where her dad, Paul Beaulieu, was based in the Air Force. They let Priscilla first go to Elvis’s house because a fellow member of the Air Force vouches for Elvis and escorts Priscilla there. He asks Priscilla to go to the party after spotting her sitting alone at a restaurant. In real life, Elvis’s friend Currie Grant met Priscilla at a supper club and invited her to the party. He had to use his own Air Force connections to convince Priscilla’s parents to let him go.
After it became clear that Elvis wanted to date Priscilla, her parents put up a fight, and Priscilla remembers them raising complaints about her age — she was 14 when they met — the same way they do in the film. Like in the movie, Elvis — who was 24 — and his father Vernon came over to impress his parents.
When Elvis’s military service ended, she escorted him to the airport to see him off and was even photographed that day (pictured). Like in the movie, they were mobbed by fans, and Elvis’s team told the press Priscilla was just a friend of his. And once Elvis returned to America, he spent long periods of time ignoring her, causing her to be deeply depressed.
When Elvis finally invited Priscilla to come visit, her parents were against her making the trip, but were ultimately convinced, partly because Priscilla was so miserable. As part of the deal, she couldn’t actually stay with Elvis and had to write letters home every day — though the pair worked around that. The movie did change Priscilla’s first trip to America with Elvis however; as Priscilla writes, first she visited him in Los Angeles. She didn’t see Graceland until her second trip. In the movie, she goes to Graceland first.
Priscilla attended Catholic school in Memphis, allowing her to graduate high school — though she had to use Elvis’s fame to do so. In the movie, she cheats off a girl during one of her finals, promising that if the girl helps, she can hang out with Elvis. That scene is lifted right out of Priscilla’s book.