Elvis team: "Credit needs to be given" to rock and roll's Black pioneers

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis opened in theaters on June 24th, and the director and his cast used the press cycle around the release to argue the film could not tell Presley's story honestly without naming the Black musicians whose work shaped his sound. "It's not possible to tell the story of Elvis Presley without dealing with the issue of his relationship to Black music, Black culture, and in particular, the issue of race," Luhrmann said, according to remarks given to IGN and reported by The A.V. Club.

Austin Butler, who plays Presley, framed the film's approach in similar terms. "I'm so proud of the fact that we get to be a part of this film that puts his life in context, specifically around that, because credit needs to be given where credit is due," Butler said, per the same A.V. Club report, published June 24th by Gabrielle Sanchez and drawn from interviews conducted around the film's press junket.

What the available coverage does not settle is whether the film's own treatment of that history goes far enough. Document Journal, in a piece published August 24, 2022, argued that Elvis "favors a more nuanced and complimentary view of the artist, in which he gives back to those he took from," and that the film depicts "a Black community that loves him because he was putting their songs on the charts" — a framing the outlet treated as sympathetic to Presley rather than a full accounting of how Black artists were compensated relative to him. The cast interviews and the critical assessment of the finished film are not the same claim, and the sources reviewed here do not reconcile them.

Who the film puts on screen

Elvis casts specific Black musicians as characters rather than leaving their influence implied. Yola plays Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Alton Mason plays Little Richard, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays B.B. King, alongside a depiction of Big Mama Thornton. Per the A.V. Club's account of the press interviews, the cast said they researched the real musicians closely in preparing to play them, describing the roles as an attempt to honor those artists' own legacies rather than use them as background to Presley's rise.

The framing, in their words

It feels really important [for audiences to know about the Black pioneers of rock music].

That line came from Yola, discussing her role as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, per The A.V. Club's report on the junket interviews. Alton Mason, who plays Little Richard, was quoted in the same coverage saying, "We are the blueprint. We are the people that have opened these doors and paved the way for the next to come." Kelvin Harrison Jr., asked about playing B.B. King opposite Butler, said he "got really excited to dive into that story and discover some of those nuances and develop that with Austin and Baz," a quote The A.V. Club attributed to an IGN interview.

What it signals

Taken together, the two sources describe a familiar split in how a biopic's promotional message and its finished text can be read differently. The cast and director used the press cycle to stake out an explicit position — that Presley's story is inseparable from the Black artists who preceded and influenced him, and that the film intended to say so on screen. Document Journal's later assessment did not dispute that the film includes those artists, but questioned whether inclusion amounted to the accountability the cast's language promised, describing a narrative that ultimately reframes Presley as someone who "gives back" rather than one who benefited from a segregated music industry. Neither source resolves that gap; the interviews establish intent, and the review establishes one outlet's reading of the result, and the two are reported here as separate claims rather than a single verdict.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by The A.V. Club and Document Journal. It restores a story originally published on this site in June 2022; figures are as reported at the time.