Joanna Lumley is getting ready to take us on an hour-long personal journey for an intimate insight into Elvis Presley for ITV this November.
The actress is hoping to reveal the man behind the myth in this unique documentary of her very personal journey which is set to air November 4 at 9pm on ITV.
Joanna travels to Graceland here she meets ex-wife Priscilla Presley, as well as other surviving family and friends.
Speaking about the show, Joanna said that she really fell for him when he was young, without the lavish lifestyle. She wonders what it would have been like to meet him, and with this documentary, she really wants to get to know what he was like when he was younger and how that transformed with his fame.
© Sony
Photographer: Jaimie Gramston
ITV have been celebrating Elvis in the year that he would have turned 80, and this documentary sees Joanna at Abbey Road Studios with Priscilla. Here they see a new album recorded by
© Sony
Photographer: Jaimie Gramston
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
She also goes on a personal tour of Elvis’s home, Graceland. Speaking about the tour she says it was fabulous... "What an experience. We only explored downstairs. You don’t go upstairs because that has been kept sacred. When he died, that was considered out of bounds. It was touching to see his mother, Gladys’s room, which has been kept exactly the way it was when she was alive.”
Joanna also heads to Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis was born, where she talks to his childhood friend Sam Bell and learns all about his humble beginnings.
“To know where he came from helped me understand so much about him.
“It was humbling to see that he and his mother and father shared the same bed because they had only one bed. They really were dirt poor.
“If you started off poorer than the poorest creature when you could buy something, you’d buy a house that looked like a palace, like Graceland. And you’d buy rings, diamonds and gold. Yet he gave everything away. If he had a ring, all his friends would get a ring, a car, a horse, a dog, they all got exactly the same thing. He was unbelievably generous. I was so touched to have seen the scale of that little beginning.”
Joanna also visits the place where he recorded his first record in 1953, Sun Studios, and meets his first love, Dixie Locke. Surprisingly she learns about how he was bullied in his younger years for his appearance.
Joanna admits that the documentary has deepened her feelings towards the singer, getting to know him on a more personal level has been insightful and his kindness and generosity is pretty much evident.
She thinks he deserves the adoration he gets, still to this day.
Joanna says everyone should watch, particularly if you don't know him because you'll get an understanding of why he's loved by so many.
JOANNA LUMLEY ELVIS AND ME, WEDNESDAY 4TH NOVEMBER AT 9PM ON ITV