The Truth About Elvira's Secret Relationship
Elvira, whose real name is Cassandra Peterson, didn't have to star in a horror film to become one of the genre's biggest icons. In the '80s, Peterson created her alter ego — a Valley girl who dresses like a vampire and loads her dialogue with double entendres — to entertain viewers when they watched classic, campy horror flicks on Los Angeles TV station KHJ late at night. "Elvira's Movie Macabre" was such a big hit that Peterson's character eventually got her own movie, "Elvira: Mistress of the Dark," in 1988.
But the woman behind the big black bouffant and that signature, bold eye makeup looks so different without it that fans rarely recognize her when she's not wearing her made-for-Halloween costume. "I have long red hair, I'm much smaller than people think Elvira is, I don't have giant boobs," she told HuffPost in 2018. "I mean, they're not so bad, but with Elvira, they're pushed up and my bra is stuffed with everything except for the kitchen sink to get that cleavage."
And before the internet existed, the Mistress of the Dark's personal life was just as mysterious to her fans as her true appearance. When she embarked on her career as a horror host, Peterson had just married her manager, Mark Pierson (via OC Weekly). But this wasn't the relationship that she intentionally tried to hide from her admirers. Keep reading to find out about the real-life Elvira's hidden romance and why she was afraid of what her fans would think.
Why Cassandra Peterson had qualms about coming out
After Cassandra Peterson and Mark Pierson divorced in 2003, per The Sun, she suggested that the financial strain caused by their decision to produce another Elvira movie, "Elvira's Haunted Hills," played a role in their split. "Pretty much, it cost me all my money and my marriage," she told OC Weekly. Luckily, she had someone special in her life to lean on as she tried to move on.
In her 2021 memoir "Yours Cruelly, Elvira," Peterson revealed that she's been in a relationship with a woman for 19 years. She explained that she waited so long to come out because she was afraid of what her fans would think. "Would my fans hate me for not being what they expected me to be?" she wrote, via The Advocate.
Peterson also recounted the circumstances that led to an unexpected romance with personal trainer Teresa "T" Wierson. Wierson first caught Peterson's eye at Gold's Gym in Hollywood. The entertainer admitted to thinking that the "dark and brooding" fitness fanatic was a man until she encountered her in the ladies' room. The two women struck up a platonic friendship that became romantic when they were both recovering from breakups.
They moved in together, but Peterson didn't realize she was falling for Wierson until she suddenly felt the urge to kiss her during a movie outing. "I was stunned that I'd been friends with her for so many years and never noticed our chemistry," she recalled.
How making out with Elvis Presley indirectly put Cassandra Peterson on the path to love
The Queen of Halloween has the King of Rock 'n' Roll to thank for her career. When she was just 17 years old, Cassandra Peterson was working as a showgirl in Las Vegas when she met Elvis Presley and spent some one-on-one time with him on a date. During a 2016 appearance on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?," she described the experience. "That was a dream come true for me. There was a lot of making out going on," she said. "But we had a great time, and he is 100% responsible for me getting out of Vegas and going on with my career."
According to Peterson, she impressed Presley by singing with him, and he convinced her that she needed to start taking singing lessons as a step toward finding more entertainment work. "He went into lecture mode and he said, Let me tell you, Vegas is no place for a young girl like you. You need to get the hell out of here,'" she recalled during a 2018 HuffPost interview.
Peterson eventually ended up in Hollywood, so Presley also played an integral, albeit indirect, role in helping her find the woman who would "love her tender, love her true." In her memoir, she described how Teresa Wierson treats her. "For the first time in my life, I'm with someone who makes me feel safe, blessed, and truly loved," she wrote, per The Advocate.