Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Warner Bros. / Apple TV+
Austin Butler and his now-infamous Elvis Voice might’ve set the world on fire last year, but if any of us had thought (or hoped) that Elvis-mania would come to an end after he collected his gold statuettes at the start of this year… Well, they had another thing comin’, baby.
This year brought not only the tail end of Butler’s Elvis saga but also the start of Jacob Elordi’s time in the jumpsuit with the biopic Priscilla. Meanwhile, drama brewed within Presley’s real-life family, after the death of his daughter Lisa Marie sparked an estate dispute between Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla and his granddaughter Riley Keough. All that drama was almost enough to leave us all shook up, but as the year eases to a close, things finally appear to be calming down.
In January, Butler stunned the Golden Globes when he delivered his acceptance speech in the King’s unmistakable accent. “Is he going to do this forever?” suspicious minds wondered. “Is it some kind of bit to drum up his odds at the Oscars?” Speaking with ABC after the ceremony, Butler’s vocal coach swore his lapses into the accent were “not a put on.” But soon after, in February, Butler announced that he was “getting rid of” the drawl, which by then had become a symbol of the rigorous preparations he’d taken for the role—including, he said, not seeing his family for three years.