Former Playmates including Crystal Harris and Holly Madison have opened up about the grim reality of the Playboy Mansion, from Hugh Hefner’s ‘gross’ demands to surveillance and filth
Hugh Hefner’s ex-wife Crystal Harris has spoken out about the disturbing reality of living in the Playboy Mansion, and claims she was ‘imprisoned’ by the sex mogul.
The couple first met when Crystal was just 21 and Hefner was 60, and they tied the knot on New Year’s Eve 2012, remaining together until Hefner’s death at the age of 91. A sepsis-triggered cardiac arrest caused the millionaire’s death back in 2017.
In her bombshell autobiography released after her husband’s passing, Crystal painted a bleak picture of life inside the hedonistic Mansion, testimony that has been backed up by other ex Playmates. Other Bunnies have described living with Hefner as “hell”, revealing details of uncomfortable group sex sessions, secret intimate recordings used for blackmail, and degrading household chores in his “hoarder” home. Here’s everything the Playmates have revealed about life and intimacy with Hefner…
‘Everything was mouldy’
In her memoir, Crystal portrayed Hefner as “less sex-savvy than some of the teenage boys I’d been with years ago” and said that intimacy with him was “odd and robotic”. When it came time for romance, she claimed she would play the same Madonna song so that “no other music [would] be contaminated” for her.
However, disappointing intimacy was hardly the worst part of being one of Hefner’s Playmates. Behind the glamorous facade, Crystal alleged that the Playboy Mansion was a mess, stating: “Everything was mouldy and dusty and it was just hoarder central in the mansion.”
On the podcast Girls Next Door, co-hosted by Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, both former girlfriends of Hugh Hefner, they painted an equally grim picture.
Bridget revealed: “The lights were out, but there were two giant TV screens in there that were playing porn.” Holly added: “It was just hoarder-style… It’s like the weird eccentric millionaire version of the guy with the mattress on the floor and a Pulp Fiction poster.”
Meanwhile, in the docuseries Secrets of a Playboy, former valet Stefon Tetelbaum gave a stomach-churning account of the mansion’s state. She confessed: “I had to put on rubber gloves and pick up the dildos from the floor and put them in a special bucket.
“The maids would take them downstairs, spray them with a steam cleaner to sterilise them and then put them in plastic bags. I would carry them back upstairs and put them back in the headboard.”
Despite the chaos, Hefner maintained a tight grip over everything that happened in the mansion. Bridget claimed that he kept a “black book” to keep track of how much each Playmate had been paid, who had slept with him and when it had occurred.
If the women hadn’t been intimate “enough” with him, he would use the black book to call them out. Holly recalled: “He’d be like, ‘Oh, you’ve been on your period for three weeks.'”
Hefner allegedly kept the mansion under constant surveillance, with recording equipment capturing footage in every room – even when Playmates begged for them to be switched off. “He was a voyeur,” Stefon revealed. “Hefner taped everything in his bedroom and many men and star athletes came into the bedroom and had sex with these girls.”
Hefner is said to have hoarded these recordings, featuring hundreds of women, and use them for blackmail purposes. In 2022, Crystal tweeted: “I found thousands of those disposable camera photos you are talking about… I immediately ripped up and destroyed every single one of them.”
Another of his favourite pastimes was group sex sessions, which Holly described as “disgusting”. She continued: “He wouldn’t move. He would be like a bump on the log in the middle of the bed. I can’t explain to you guys how embarrassing that whole routine was… You’re literally sitting there naked having sex in front of a group of people who hate you and talk sh*t about you while you’re having sex. It was like hell.
‘Like having sex with your grandpa’
Twin sisters Kristina and Karissa Shannon, who were invited into Hefner’s bedroom on their 19th birthday, claimed they were pressured into a threesome with the then 82-year-old. They alleged he gave them a tablet that left them feeling “the most inebriated we’ve ever been” before being propositioned for the threesome, which “we would never want to do”.
“It’s like having sex with your grandpa,” Karissa confessed, explaining that afterwards they “ran down the hall… We hit the shower, steaming hot. Our skin was red from just trying to sterilise.”
The duo also claimed that women endured frequent chlamydia infections at the mansion, as Hefner refused to use protection. “From the butlers, we’d just order a big bowl and we’d put hot water in it, then we’d put rags in it,” Karissa said. “So whoever was having intercourse with him, when they were finished, they can wipe him off. And then the other girl could do it.”
Kendra Wilkinson, another former girlfriend, remembered: “I had to be very drunk or smoke lots of weed to survive those nights – there was no way around it.”
