Crystal Harris, the widow of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, has urged actress Jessica Biel to quit “Playmates,” a coming-of-age film set inside the Playboy Mansion, warning that it risks glamorizing a world she says harmed women.
Harris posted a direct message to Biel on Instagram on Oct. 8, days after the actress joined the cast as a fictional wife of Hefner. “Please reconsider,” she wrote, if the film aims to romanticize him or the Playboy world. Harris said she experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse in her marriage. She added that other women have alleged rape, coercion and drugging, and cited “deeply troubling concerns involving minors.”
Harris married Hefner in 2012, at 26, when he was 86, and remained his wife until his death in 2017 at age 91. She detailed her experience in a 2024 memoir, “Only Say Good Things.” She closed her message by asking everyone involved in the film to listen to women who lived it before turning it into “nostalgia.”
Lorraine Nicholson, daughter of Jack Nicholson, writes and directs the Searchlight film in her feature debut. She has drawn loosely on her own childhood at the mansion, where she befriended Hefner’s sons, Marston and Cooper. The story follows Elle, a 13-year-old played by Indiana Elle, who treats the mansion as a second home. Elle befriends Anna (Lily-Rose Depp), a hopeful Playmate chasing a magazine cover, and the two try to help each other get what they want most. Bill Pullman plays Hefner.
Biel’s character is invented. She does not portray Harris or Hefner’s earlier wives, Mildred Williams and Kimberley Conrad. The distinction has not quieted concern. Some commentators have questioned how a story centered on a young teenager can handle its setting without softening it, a worry Harris’s message echoes.
Biel had not publicly answered Harris as of the latest reports.
