Searchlight Pictures is making Playmates, a coming-of-age movie set at the Playboy Mansion. Lorraine Nicholson, Jack Nicholson's daughter, wrote and is directing it. She based it on her own childhood visits to the Mansion. In the film, a 13-year-old girl befriends a young woman competing to be Playmate of the Month. Bill Pullman plays Hugh Hefner, and Lily-Rose Depp stars. This week Jessica Biel joined the cast as a fictional Hefner wife. On Thursday, Hefner's widow, Crystal Hefner, posted a message asking Biel to reconsider. On Saturday, Holly Madison said she's excited for the film. She dated Hefner for seven years. Biel hasn't responded publicly.

A Mansion Movie Can't Be Nostalgic About Hefner

His widow says Hollywood shouldn't glamorize a man she says abused her.

She says the marriage was abusive. "Please reconsider playing Hugh Hefner's 'wife' if this film intends to romanticize him or the Playboy world," Crystal Hefner wrote to Biel. She was married to Hefner from 2012 until he died in 2017. "I was actually his wife, and I experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse in that relationship," she wrote.

Other women have accused him too. She pointed to other women's allegations of "rape, coercion, drugging and exploitation." She also raised concerns involving minors.

She wants an honest portrayal instead. "I hope everyone involved in this film takes the time to listen to the women who lived it before helping Hollywood turn it back into nostalgia," she wrote. She said she'd rather see "an honest portrayal of Hugh Hefner and the control he wielded." She noted that women play the lead roles. She said she hopes the film shows women finding independence beyond Playboy.

But One of Hefner's Loudest Critics Is Excited

Holly Madison says other women get to tell their own Mansion stories.

For years, she's accused Hefner herself. Holly Madison dated Hefner from 2001 to 2008. Her 2015 memoir described emotional abuse and manipulation at the Mansion. In A&E's 2022 docuseries Secrets of Playboy, she called the Mansion "very cult-like."

Even so, she can't wait to see this movie. "I can't wait to see it," Madison told TMZ on Saturday. She called Nicholson "a wonderful writer" and said, "I love Lily-Rose Depp, too."

Other people's stories deserve a fair hearing, she says. Madison said she keeps an open mind when other people tell their Playboy stories. She said she appreciates it when people listen to hers, so she wants to give others the same courtesy.

And the Director Remembers an Innocent Place

Nicholson based the film on visiting the Mansion as a kid, when she says she didn't know about its nighttime side.

As a kid, she spent years at the Mansion. "From the year I was born, 1990, until I was about 11, I went to the Playboy Mansion, because that's where my friends were," Nicholson wrote in a 2024 Vanity Fair essay. She was childhood friends with Hefner's children.

By her account, she never saw the dark side. She told W Magazine the Mansion "was such a place of innocence, paradoxically." "I didn't know that the place had this other side by night," she said. She also wrote that she knew the Mansion "was not intended for children" and was "constantly vigilant" about seeing something she shouldn't.

The movie centers on two girls. The lead is a 13-year-old girl, and her friend is competing to be Playmate of the Month. Biel's character isn't based on any of Hefner's three real wives.

Where This Lands

Crystal Hefner says any film that turns the Mansion into nostalgia ignores the women who say Hefner abused them. Madison has made similar accusations, and she still says she can't wait to see the movie. Nicholson has said the Mansion felt innocent to her as a kid, and that she didn't see its other side. Biel and Searchlight haven't answered Crystal Hefner. Searchlight hasn't announced a release date.

Sources