Crystal Harris Asks Jessica Biel to Reconsider Playmates Role

Crystal Harris, the widow of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, is asking Jessica Biel to reconsider a role in Searchlight’s upcoming film Playmates, saying she fears the project could romanticize Hefner and the Playboy world she has described as abusive, Variety and E! News reported.

After Biel’s casting as a fictionalized version of Hefner’s wife was announced, Harris shared an Instagram direct message she sent the actress. “Please reconsider playing Hugh Hefner’s wife if this film intends to romanticize him or the Playboy world,” she wrote, according to Variety’s Pat Saperstein. “I was actually his wife, and I experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse in that relationship.”

Harris, who was married to Hefner for nearly five years until his death in 2017, also pointed to other women who have alleged rape, coercion, drugging and exploitation tied to the Playboy ecosystem. “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 in the message she later posted publicly on Oct. 8, E! News reported. Biel’s representatives had not commented publicly as of E!’s Oct. 9 update.

Playmates marks the feature directorial debut of Lorraine Nicholson, Jack Nicholson’s daughter, who is also writing the script. The Searchlight film stars Bill Pullman as Hefner, alongside Lily-Rose Depp and Indiana Elle. According to the project’s synopsis cited by Variety, the story follows Elle, a 13-year-old who treats the Playboy Mansion as a second home, and Anna (Depp), one of seven hopefuls competing to become Playmate of the Month, as they form an unlikely friendship while chasing a magazine cover and a romance.

Nicholson has written previously about her own childhood experiences around the mansion, Variety noted—an autobiographical thread that complicates any tidy nostalgia read of the material. Harris’s intervention arrives days after Biel’s attachment became public, turning a casting announcement into a broader argument about who gets to narrate the Playboy years on screen and how carefully those stories should handle survivors’ accounts.

Harris detailed her time at the mansion in her 2024 memoir Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, describing what she called a toxic, restrictive environment after moving in as a young Playmate. In prior interviews, including with E! News in 2024, she said life there left her unsure of her own identity and that she “was never truly in love” with Hefner even as she cared for him late in his life. She has also described weekly allowances, curfews and a culture of comparison that she said eroded her sense of self.

The public plea lands as Hollywood continues to revisit the Playboy brand on screen, years after documentaries and survivor accounts challenged the mansion’s glamorous mythology. Harris framed her message not as a blanket ban on dramatization but as a demand that filmmakers weigh lived experience before packaging the era as soft-focus entertainment. Whether Biel or Searchlight respond remains an open question; for now, Harris has put the ethical stakes of the role squarely in public view. More entertainment coverage is on our Daily News page.

Verification: Casting, Harris’s Instagram message wording, abuse allegations summary, Nicholson’s dual writer-director role, Pullman/Depp/Elle cast and film synopsis are from Variety (Pat Saperstein, Oct. 8). Harris’s public Oct. 8 post timing, E! outreach to Biel’s camp and memoir context are from E! News (Gabrielle Chung, Oct. 9).