The meaning behind Riley Keough’s daughter’s name may get your emotions all shook up.
The Daisy Jones & The Six star revealed the name of her first child with husband, Australian stuntman and actor Ben Smith-Petersen, exclusively to Vanity Fair in a profile published online Tuesday: Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen.
The couple quietly welcomed their daughter in August 2022 via surrogate, and her middle name is in honour of Keough’s late brother — Benjamin Storm Keough, who died in 2020 at the age of 27.
“He, in a lot of ways, felt like my twin,” the actor told the magazine. “We were very connected and very similar. He was much quicker and wittier and a little smarter than me.”
She added: “He was a very special soul.”
Keough also paid tribute to her grandfather – the late and legendary singer Elvis Presley – with her daughter’s first name. Tupelo is the town in Mississippi where the King of Rock ’n’ Roll was born.
“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” Keough says. “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.”
But it seems Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic changed that a bit.
“Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine,” she added.
The Zola star and her husband publicly mentioned they had a daughter for the first time at the funeral of Keough’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, in January 2023.
Lisa Marie Presley died at 54 on January 12 after experiencing a small bowel obstruction.
At the memorial service for her mother, Smith-Petersen read out a eulogy on behalf of his wife.
“I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters,” Keough’s eulogy read, in part. “Thank you for giving me strength, my heart, my empathy, my courage, my sense of humour, my manners, my temper, my wildness, my tenacity. I’m a product of your heart.”
Keough also opened up to Vanity Fair about her approach to parenthood.
“This is the thing in my life so far that I have really wanted to, quote-unquote, get right,” she said. “I don’t think you ever can be a perfect parent, but I would like to be the best mum for her that I can be.”