My guest today is American model Crystal Heffner, who is best known as two thousand and nine's Playboy Playmate of the Month for December, as well as being the third wife of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. Crystal's brand new book Only Say Good Things Surviving Playboy and Myself has been making headline since it's released last month as she opens up about her life in the Playboy mansion. This is just me with Crystal Hefner. Let's get into it. Well, very nice to meet you. So I had a holly on.
I just thought that would be a good idea and a good conversation. And I used to have an agent that also represented Kendra, So like your, your world was peripherally in my in my vision, very peripherally. And I did live in la and was a hostess a La Scala in my twenties and some of thirties, and I used to hear about the Playboy parties. So but I was yeah, and I would I would have died to go. And I was never invited. I wasn't part of that group. I don't think I added any value or anything. But
so like I knew how iconic and prevalent. They were in La the fiction, absolutely, you know, and very reputable and very successful and very respected people were always there.
Yeah, yeah, there were, and there were a lot of Yeah. It was like an a list type of vibe of the Playboy Mansion for sure.
Which is crazy if you think about it now, because you're thinking about the Jeffrey Epstein Island and you're thinking about all the people like former presidents and titans of industry. So I just keep making that parallel to this situation and hearing your story and Holly's story and what I'm reading.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think Helf wasn't necessarily a predator. I think there would be more a much more, you know, lawsuits against him. But this was also a time before Me Too. Me Too happened a month after hef died, so it's almost like, wow, he left just in time, like his specific moment in history that was just perfect for him, and then he just pieced out like right
at the perfect time. I remember when he was still alive, the Cosby stuff had just started coming out, and you know, he knew that, he knew that Cosby was not the best guy. For sure.
Well, I definitely want to get into you, and that obviously for you to be here, it's because your identity is definitely tied to playboy Hugh Hefner. And I'm sure you're trying to maybe this book is closure for you, so you can have your own identity in your own life and it's not to find you, but it is also part of your story. So I'm sure you want to kind of just like say it in your own terms, your own on your in your own words, on your own terms, and like get it out.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's helpful in the healing process. There were a lot of things that happened there. I didn't fully realize until after that messed me up a bit and created I had this narrative for seventy years. He just he stuck so hard at this narrative. He has three thousand scrap books that just document his life from the very beginning all the way to the end. He asked us to put to put all like the obituaries and photos of him like at Westwood Memorial and
the end. And I think he believed that these books would be studied for generations and generations, and he truly felt like he was an icon and a gift to the world.
Well, it's first you said that you don't think that he was necessarily a predator. But one what I've read about you n Holly describing things as Stockholm and like you didn't really realize what you were necessarily in. It felt like a cult. It's submissive and obedient and behave and all that. So, like, what if that's not a word for that, because you're praying on the week if you're looking for a certain type that's way younger and that you can be a power figure in their life.
So if that's not a predator, what is that true?
I believe that that is a predator. I think what I meant by that, by what I said was that, you know, he's not the type of person that would like force women against their will or drug people's drinks or things like that. But got it, Yeah, he did. I guess pray on young women. I was twenty one when I went into the mansion. I came from a broken home and a broken family. I think that younger girls are easier to manipulate. When I was twenty one,
I felt like I was a grown up. But now at thirty seven, I look back and like I was I was just a baby, and.
Yeah, true, because I do remember I told this one I was talking to Holly being in La and there were some parties that were like skis crazy, Like you'd go to Malibu and you'd go and there was a lot of like coke and a lot of like just deviance and you kind of are young and you don't it feels uncomfortable, but you don't know why it must be so wrong because everybody's there and seeming like it's right.
Like I just will always remember hearing about this pajama party and I didn't, and I'm so so naive that I went with my girlfriend. I think I was a hostess at the time and I was young, wanted to be an actress. And we showed up and I was wearing cow flannel pajamas. But they called it a pajama party. But it was really like everybody in like really sexy lingerie and the men were wearing like tight, you know, underwear, like things that you probably saw every time at the Mansion.
But for whatever reason, it made me feel really really dark and uncomfortable. And I will be honest, I wanted to feel comfortable there, like I didn't know what was wrong with me that it didn't feel right?
That's really sad. I'm just thinking about you showing up in your little cow costume, your calpajamas, and yeah, it's like you're not cool unless you're showing off your body, which is.
Right, but being very sexual and it was like lingerie. And I don't think I was like a sexual person in that way, like I could be maybe with one. But so that was a lot of currency in La overall, and you were in the middle of it. And so I ask you, as a young girl, being from a broken home, were you predispoke? Did you were you promiscuous in high school? Were you like very sexual? Did you shield other things with sexuality? Because it can go both ways. Many people go to try to get love from sex
in high school and college. You don't understand the girl who's sleeping with the whole hockey team because you know that's not going to end well. But in the moment, each hockey player they feel like is going to give them love or something.
Yeah. Absolutely, I lost my high school sweetheart and that was very hard. He died in the war in Iraq. And after that, I think I was about eighteen nineteen and I thought, you know, people were paying attention to me in that way, and I just thought, oh, I can use it, like sexuality as a tool basically. And I feel that was like an option for women to just it still is, and I do think it helped
with the Playboy Mansion and getting in there. If I didn't have implants and I wasn't dressed in a skimpy French made outfit, Heff would have just looked right past me. If I was wearing the kappajamas, I don't think it would have invited me.
In, right, And do you think that? So, first of all, anybody who's going to deny that using their sexuality or the way they look as a tool is something that if you have it, you're not going to use it is lying like it's just it's part of it, and it's confused. And I wonder if it's a curse being attractive and having that sect and being so you know, looking so good, because then you're not focusing on your mind or your intelligence or your business acumen, and neither
is anyone else. So how has that been part of your life?
You know, around that time before the mansion, it was a time when Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra were super famous, and you could just feel this sexual energy just coming up, using their sexuality as a tool, just oozing off of like pages of magazines in the news. And so that's around that time, that's kind of what you aspire to be. You're like, oh, these women are powerful, they have the world at their feet, Like I want
to be just like them. So then you get the boob job and bleach the hair, and you're like, wow, I could really be somebody if I was like if I was like them, And I think that's kind of how it started off for me. But over time, and your value is just skin deep. It really eats at your soul when you're only valued for what you look like and you're constantly trying to keep up, keep up with appearances. You know, hefwoods say, you know you're getting fat or your nails or your hair, just picking at me.
And in the beginning, I thought, oh, I can do better, like, oh I can be I can be better. I can do better, But over time it's it's it just made me angry. And that was also time with social media, I was posting bikini photos. It's like twenty fourteen, and and I realized, I like, I'm contributing to this. It's toxic, it's misogynistic, like a misogynistic culture. I'm contribute contributing to it.
It sucks and it It took time and just learning and the time shifting to fully realize that your your value isn't what you look like.
Yeah, and that's been one of the things about the Kardashians that in the past I've discussed and I I don't know if I don't see it as much, or maybe they're not as in the same position they were before, but I don't see it as much. But as a mother of a teen, I was thinking about just it
doesn't matter. If it does matter, if they're all amazing, brilliant, lovely people, the message being put out is lose the weight in two weeks to get on the met Gala, the filtering of the pictures, that editing the bones out and the wastes and the butts, and Kylie Jenner doesn't look anything like what she looked like. And so that's
their business, but their currency. And so yesterday you're watching Mark Zuckerberg talking and trying to defend the fact that it's been proven that teen girls are having massive anxiety and major body security issues that are leading to real problems and suicide from social media. So that's where that
connection is. And sometimes I feel like, you know, having to say the difficult things against really popular families is but trying to do it in a constructive way is challenging because they're so you know, but there is a fact. It's a fact that this is like an influence on people. And you experienced it too.
Yeah, it's hard and it is toxic, and it's hurting young girls. You know. I think that the Kardashians are brilliant and they've created this huge empire for themselves. The thing that sucks is the youth cells and beauty cells. But I think times are changing a bit, you know. I'm seeing people like that would be considered older, like in ads now and Sephora and things like that. I
think it's shifting a bit too. But if the Kardashians helped with the message of just loving yourself, like self love, self acceptance, I think girls that look up to them that would be much healthier. You can't keep up with them. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars of surgery. Uh. The other day I saw Kim Kardashian posting, Uh, just psoriasis. It's like all over our big big patches, like all
of our legs and everywhere. And I just think to myself, like, you keep putting this like toxic stuff in your body. It's not like nothing is like natural from the earth. It's just you know, these the fillers and implants and all these things, and your body's gonna have a reaction. You're gonna have to pay for that later.
And that's it's very interesting.
It's sad.
That's that movie Death Becomes Her when everybody's just getting all the surgery and plastic and everything, and like their their their ears and everything starts falling off because they look young and they're trying to chase you. Their body starts falling apart. Yeah, so you were in La and well you lived in San Diego and you go to the Playboy mansion and you're chosen, and I can see the allure in that like that, we can all just judge. It's like very not unlike the Housewives. Didn't she know
what she signed up for? But I imagine it's not on the first day, like it's an evolution. You just somehow. Holly said it was seven years later and she couldn't believe that had been seven years. So, you know, you had a curfew and you had a small budget, and were you on the show too?
I was on season six of The Girl's next Door and you know, half made four hundred thousand dollars an episode and I didn't make anything.
Wow, And you knew that then or you found it out later?
Now? Then I knew that hef and the producer because he would always have him on speakerphone, Kevin Burns. They would talk, oh, he just picked it up in four hundred thousand each episode and eight episodes, and so I would hear they would all brag with each other. And I didn't get paid anything for The Girls next Door season six. I was made to feel like, oh, I should just be so lucky to be there, and I didn't want to do it. I never wanted to be famous.
That was never my goal. Never wanted to be an actress or anything like that.
Fascinating. So did you feel that you were exploited by E or it was just hef like because are they this goes on with Bravo and Housewives they should be lucky to be there, and me, Bethany Frankel, I'd be nothing. Everybody, I'd be nothing if I was never on the Housewives, Like that's what it's been boiled down to.
I hate that because it's like if if it wasn't that, like you have the personality to, you know, be the best in another situation. So yeah, I hate it when people people say things like that, And yeah, there's a lot of things were unfair. When Hef had asked me to marry him, they were filming another show called Marrying Hef It was going to be on Lifetime. I found out. I found out they were making eight hundred thousand dollars for a two hour special wow, and my talent fee
was twenty five hundred. So it's weird. It's strange because a lot of people, I'm like, ninety nine point nine percent of the comments from the book are incredible, but that, like the troll percentage is like profiting off a dead man and all this stuff. I was like, did we ever think about how he profited off of me personally? Or did we ever think about how profited profited off of all of these women? For years and years and years, all the way to the very very first issue Marilyn Monroe.
He bought her photos from a calendar company, put him in the put him in the magazine. She didn't get a dime, and she started the whole empire. Now I was buried next to her, and she has no say and whose bones are buried next to her for all eternity?
Oh my god, that's insane. Wow. Okay, So you walk into this party and you feel lucky to be chosen, you know. And the way it's described and what I was reading is like multiple people, we're having sex with him in one space.
Yeah. Yeah. The first night in his bedroom there twins were there, which to me they were sisters. They were nineteen. It's disgusting, you know. I remember him holding them on each side of him and like looking up into this mirror and he's like, my babies. Wow, I'm just like, these girls are nineteen.
And why did you like, so, what did you feel disgusting about yourself? Like did you feel like it was prostitution? Like what? What? What was going through your mind? Like going there and being in a French maid costume is one thing, but like having sex with him, and he's and I'm not. I promise you on my life, I'm not judging at oh I don't like Yeah, I want to like really understand I'm not and I would never have you on here to like then beat you down. It's not I I'm You're a smart girl, you're a
beautiful girl. You could be with anybody you want in the world, with or without have So it's the something fucked up that went down. And I kind of want to like no, because people have daughters, go off to college, go off you by the selves want to be actors as you cannot put them in bubble wrap, so like you're someone's daughter.
My parents came from England. They didn't have green cards. My dad died and it was just my mom and I. We were renting a bedroom in some other family's house like we had We had nothing. So yeah, I always felt small. I always felt that everyone was better than me. And when I went into the mansion I met Heff.
Even though it was like this kind of twisted situation that I didn't realize the magnitude until much later, I did feel like, oh, this is somewhere I could feel safe or feel that I could belong like I can belong somewhere.
Finally, that sounds like a cult, which is hoppened.
It was definitely, it was definitely a cult. There's a cult leader. You do everything they tell you to do. If you slip up and get in trouble, like, you feel guilty and terrible and you're going to do better. I spoke to two women that were in a cult, and we all reminded ourselves of each other. It was it was a cult for sure.
That that makes it make sense to me, Like because everybody could be logical and all the moms with our cross body bags and our lattes can be like, oh she knew and gossip. But like you were young, you were twenty one, You walked in there. And if you get into a cult, your mind is completely fucked up because everything you're saying, you didn't get paid, you had a curfew, you got in trouble like and so what did make you stay? What did you like? Did you
love him? Did you love the experience like you felt like you belonged like? What made you keep going? And did you ever try to get out in the middle of it?
Yeah? I think with colts you get a little bit brainwashed, you know, as impressionable. And I'm in this place where he's the king of his castle. He's got about seventy staff that are all yes men all around him, and it's this big bubble and you get kind of stuck in it and sucked in and and you know, my thirty seven year old self that has more wisdom. If I in my twenty one year old body would be punching him in the face, like and calling him discussing
and what are you doing to these women? But I didn't have the tools then, and I was trying to fit in and I thought, I'm going to do whatever this man wants me to do to be like the favorite.
Or the best.
And it's gross.
That reminds me. That's why I always say that Housewives is like a cult, because everybody's trying to kiss up to the leader and be the favorite and everybody, you know it really it's not. They're not living together, but everybody wants to be the favorite, and people want to be there. And it's funny because I was criticized like that. We you know, everyone knows what they're signing up for. And I will be honest at this point now in twenty twenty four. I think everybody does know what they're
signing up for. But and back then it sounded like a good idea. It was just like a nice show and you're making you know, you're making well, you know, make money yet but you eventually do you not making money? That's even crazier, Like, I don't you you were literally just getting to live in this nice house, but taking up years of your life. And then we get into were you Did you ever love him?
I never was in love with half right off the bat, like, Okay, if this man wants four women in the bed with him, he cannot love me. Like that's it's a joke. That's a joke. So for what it's worth. You know, I didn't know then. I didn't know then that he was a narcissist. Now I know that he's a narcissist. Now all of his behavior makes more sense to me. You know, we didn't really use those terms when I was when I was there, and now I'm like, okay, it's all
about him. I just be his mirror and reflect his self importance back at him. It's everything he wants to do sexually. Who gives a shit about me? It's all about what he wants and his stupid little ritual and routine that he has. And yeah, his friend would bring articles for him and just anything related to himself. That's all he wanted to talk about. And so as long as you're doing that, he likes you. And that's probably how Holly became so close with him or the number
one or whatever. And same with me, is that we just followed along better than the other people and made completely lost ourselves to just mirror him.
You behaved, it's terrible.
Yeah, you lose yourself because the real meat wouldn't bleach my scalp and burn my head. The real meat wouldn't wear stupid little outfits and stupid heels to all these parties and try and keep sexualizing myself. Like now, like I've thrown all of that stuff away. It just makes me sick. I'm over it. But I didn't have the tools then be so weird.
Because you don't recognize that person.
No, I feel sorry for myself at that young age and manipulated by an eighty year old man when I was twenty one, and I remember being there and just being so in it that he half would do interviews and say, oh, the sound of young girls laughter like keeps me young? And then I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me. Wow, I feel so special, And now I'm like, yuck. It's like goes into those conspiracy theories of like eating the blood of children or something. Right, but it was it's gross.
And I remember when Holly's book came out and how dare she say all these bad things about hef But but now now I'm like, She's right, it's weird.
Do you have any relationship with the other women or is it too traumatizing like to talk to them about this.
I talked to Kendra the most. I think that Holly and Bridgett there's still some kind of I don't know. I just wish we could all get along. And we're not going to agree on everything, but I just wish we could get along. At the Playboy Mansion, that whole experience is something that was like some weird social experiment in time that will never be repeated again. So the people that went through there I want to stay connected to because it's it's interesting.
It's an experience, but like a cult, you're sort of compartmentalized and often pitted against each other, and so the things that happened in that extraordinary circumstanstance, then is affecting your relationships now that if you met them at a restaurant or in a store, you might be friends with them.
But because you all went through this harrowing that's housewives too, their housewes that hate me, their housewives that hate me based on something I might have said about a blog or based on being in this extraordinary experiment with them that doesn't reflect real life or who I am or who they are. You know, people ratting each other out, people saying that someone was really broke, this one cheated on their husband, you know what I mean. It just
you do different things in that environment. And I think that's probably why you're saying that you don't currently have a relation with other people in that experience.
Yeah, and I think it gets ingrained in us in a completely cellular level to all hate each other.
It's sad exactly in a time where we're supposed to be host me too. These things are interesting that they happen, They still happen, and the men somehow are at the top of the realm. Yes, fascinating. So and I by reading about this sect well, first of all I'm picking up that you feel you're probably still really working through
this in therapy or like how are you coping? Are you still feeling shame as you go through this experience talking about it through this book, because writing it is one thing, then it goes to print and now here you are like living it again.
Yeah. I think what I'm trying to do is just give myself grace and not be so hard on myself. But yeah, that place was very hard, and this a lot of gross stuff. You know, a lot of this celebrities that even came through there, Like a lot of those men were gross, like yep, gross, perver, misogynistic, nasty people. And I'm like, Hollywood is gross. You know, people people have these certain dreams and it's it's all smoke and mirrors. It's disgusting. Everywhere you turn, it's it sucks and it's
not real. And people idolize fame and Hollywood and I think trash. Literally you go down to Hollywood Boulevard and there's just trash everywhere.
By the way, I have I know all the guys who are at those parties, and I know there's scumbags, And that's what I asked Holly, but she didn't have like an answer to this. I was wondering, well, where do you live now?
I live in West Hollywood. I'm still in Los Angeles, but I go between here in Hawaii. I have a farm in Hawaii, which.
Is oh yeah, Well, I'm saying, when you see some of these people, you must run into people in LA that like you're both looking like they're they're hiding because I know that you've seen what they've been down with because you're on front lines.
Is that disgusting? I've had certain big actors after Half died, like one of them said, oh, can we continue that vibe at my place? I'm like, that's disgusting. And then I had another when Half wasn't well, I had another one say can we go to lunch? Because you know, Half needs to pass the torch to someone and it might as well be me.
Wow, Like, what the heck?
What do these men think? Why do they think they're God's gift?
It's disgusting, It's unbelievable, and it's so funny because that's what that pretty woman seeing was about. And like Julia Roberts is there, and then Jason Alexander thinks he's just gonna grab Julia Roberts for himself, you know, like she's just like.
So many Jason, Alexander's a.
Piece of property. Yeah. So, and it's interesting that, well, so you get married, do you have friends at this time? Are all your friends in that that you think? Are your friends in that world? Are you talking to friends family about getting married? Are they like, she's your nuts? And like what about that?
I just my mom at that point, and she she encouraged it. She she had gone to the Playboy Club in London, and you know, she's British and she's just fun, life of the party. She loved going to the parties. Now I speak to her and she said, I had no idea. It was like that if I did, you know, I wouldn't want you to go there. But so she feels shamed too. Yeah, I think so. It was hard for you to read the book?
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. That reminds me of Paris and Kathy, with Paris going to that horrible boarding school and Kathy oh yeah, noing, you know, having to hear about it, read about it, and feel partially responsible as a mother. Your number one job is to protect your daughter.
Yeah, and she thought she was doing the right thing for her.
Yeah, the sexual descriptions that you give of hef sound like that, like he couldn't get it up, he couldn't keep it up, and he wasn't good in bed. So he put on this whole costume with his whole life of like sex, when it seems like it was like some real problem, like at the core, the one thing that he portrayed is the one thing that he couldn't do.
It's yeah, it's it's crazy, and it's interesting you say that because it's so true. I remember going out with him and fans would just swarm him and be like, heth, you're the man. I want to be just like you everywhere, And I'm thinking, heaf isn't even like himself. He's just pretending smoke and mirrors. He was this broken child. Everyone
he had a crush on all liked somebody else. He was a nerd, and his first wife cheated on him, and he was just you know, had all of these stepbacks in life, and I think he just over His parents never showed him love, so he over compensated with this creation and this fantasy, and he never really knew how to love. He never really knew how to make love. He supposed to be this master at all of these things, and he wasn't. He had no idea. All he cared
about is himself. So if he didn't even have the capacity to try and care or understand, you know, another person. So it's hard. It's just he's like the sad little boy that just was always a sad little boy. I felt sorry for him all I go up until he died.
Well, that's common because I call it a trick guy. And girls need to watch out for these trick guys. They're the guys that are the dorks. So you think like, oh, they're just a cute, little dorky nerdy guy, and you think that that's gonna mean that they're gonna like treat you so well or be like the good guy. But that dorky nerdy guy sometimes is fucked up for the fact that girls would never give him attention or sleep with him in the earlier days, which does form how men are.
Maybe Heff was just angry and took it out on all of us.
I don't know, something something deep seated, you know, to show. Yeah, well it's exerting power. I'm I'm, I'm gonna show them and I'm the powerful one.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you date now? That must be challenging or has been challenging and trusting and trusting yourself.
Yeah, in the beginning, dating was hard. I would run into situations where I felt controlled and manipulated. Still and a lot of that was okay. It was like a struggling musician, a struggling actor. So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, here i am being controlled manipulated, and this time I'm paying the bills like this is this is getting is getting worse. So more more therapy and now you know I'm dating in the relationships are much you know, more healthy and happy.
Well again, I'm fine. Hallie literally said she first went towards the same type of person, not realizing it might be a different package. But it was a similar type of person, so you have that in common, and then had to intervene for in what she was looking at, like, it's me, I'm the problem. It's me. I've got to be looking at different partners.
Definitely. Yeah. Now I cannot tolerate anything less than nurturing.
And what about career? Now, so what is your own identity? What do you do for a living. How do you support yourself? What do you want to do? You're still young? What do you want to be when you grow up?
My real job is I buy and flip properties. I've redesigned homes. I like to add a lot of natural elements, reclaim wood, and yeah, I just I'm a minimalist. So I have about six properties between California and Hawaii. When I was in therapy for five years, I remember the therapist saying, you know, whatever you're doing, now, make sure it has nothing to do with what you look like. So I don't do any like social media ads or anything to do with what I look like. It's all mainly house stuff.
I do that a lot too. I love that.
Yeah, it's fun, it's creative. It's it's fun. It's yeah, it's nice.
It's business, it's creative. There's an't you see transformation? When you say you have six properties, you have six that you keep or that you're flip. You're currently going to flip.
Two of them. I'm building homes and I'll sell the homes, but the other four I'm keeping for now.
Did leave He didn't seem to leave Holly anything. She wasn't married to him. Did you have a will. Did you get married and at least have a prenup or a will.
We had a prenup, but it was very unfair. The first lawyer wouldn't sign it. I had to take it to someone else to sign it. And I think because I felt so trapped, I wanted to just start saving. I got I became a playmate and got some playmate money, and I just screw and grew, grew the money. I learned how to DJ. During the day. I would fly to Vegas and DJ and come straight back for movie night. And so I saved up some money and opened a
secret LLC. I was able to buy a house, and from that I bought another house and another house, and so I was just I think back because I did feel trapped, but that at that point I had millions, and my mom said, you know, you can leave any time you want, and I remember saying, like, I can't leave him. He needs me. And this is you know, later, like a couple of years before he died, and I could have left and been fine.
And you had millions while living in the playboy mansion, staying in the marriage.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely did.
You weren't. Yeah, how did you earn millions while you were a prisoner?
Right? I Like, I thought to myself because I would see women that bought a range Rover or like lubaitons, like girl, like buy a condo? What are you doing? I'm so glad I had that mindset because yeah, I saved and I bought a house. I ended up buying another house. I was DJing. It was like seventy five hundred dollars.
A wait, but this is aster you're saying, right, this is during wait, he let you. But that's what I don't understand. He was telling I'm reading that he gave people one thousand dollars a week and people had a curfew. So I would have thought, because men like to control financially, how did he let you buy a house? Who is like your lawyer?
They didn't know? He didn't know.
Well this is interesting, okay, so what the hell is this part? Like this is the me like every time, it's like a nugget that I'm like, we weren't even talking about. So wait a minute. So this is and this is what many women should do, like having a nest egg. This is you would never invest in a business that that someone said sixty percent chance it's going
to fail, and that's most marriages. So it's hard to hear that women A obviously need to have a prenup, B need to have their own Everybody doesn't need to like put their money with somebody else's. So let's get down to this now. How are you saving while under the roof with Hugh Hefner, arguably one of the most controlling men I've ever heard about, who doesn't want anybody to have their own resources or job or time, how are you saving millions of dollars while under this roof?
I need you to be specific. I need to understand.
Okay, Well, when I was first there, I was given a thousand dollars every Friday, and which is nothing, you know, for a twenty four seven job. And I remember the twins and I we had to go into HEF's room and basically beg him every Friday, have can we have
our allowance? And he would open the locked cabinet and pull out an envelope with one hundred dollar bills and be like one hundred, two hundred, one hundred to you know for and just count it out for the three girls and then hand us these stacks and.
That that alone is degrading, that you had to go beg for the scraps every week like dogs.
Yeah, I felt like a hooker, right, Okay, That's how I felt, And it was disgusting and demoralizing, and that that kind of ritual lit a fire inside me to where I'm like, I want to never have to do this ever again. Whenever I'm away from the situation and out of here, I want to make sure that I never have to be in this kind of thing ever again. And so I remember, have made me a playmate. I
made twenty five thousand dollars. I wrote twenty five thousand on this little piece of paper, and every time I would then I would start saving the allowance and barely spending anything because we had no rent and all the things. So I was just trying to save as much as I could, and Heff would give us little extra things here and there, and sometimes I would lie and say it's for something, but I would just keep most of it.
And just like you have the Handmaid, the Handmaid like figure out out, well, yeah, you have to lie.
You'd have to. It's like, you know, at the same time, he's making four hundred thousand dollars for you know, an episode or episode of The Girl's next Door and we're making nothing. So I'm like, I gotta be smarter, smarter at this, and I learned how to DJ. I remember thinking like, I have no talent. I did a couple of playmate things during the day where I showed up and they give me nine hundred dollars.
And he allowed that, like how did you do not tell it?
If it was in the parameters, which was far im few in between. Usually the playmates were hired for night things that I couldn't go to. But I learned how to DJ, and then I got a job at the hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and they paid me seventy five hundred for an hour and a half, and so I would try and go like on Saturday and make it back before movie night. So I was like saving all of that. And then because I was at
the Mansion, people paid attention to me. I know it's just through half, of course, but I'm like, I'm just going to use it to my advantage. Social media started coming out on Instagram twenty fourteen. A company called Skinny Bunny Tea asked me to promote so I'd be like a bikini and holding the skinny bunny tea and they'd pay me like seventy five hundred every time I posted like the and it was like once or twice a week, and I would just I would just start saving and
start saving. And then I had a company in Australia I want to do a bikini line with me. And then I had another woman that wanted to do a laingerie company or a loungewear and so I'm just trying all these different avenue doscinating and I feel like financial abuse is a real thing and it sucks and it's hard.
And I have a friend right now that's in a horrible marriage with this narcissist man who I keep telling you, I'm like, save, do online stuff to be like an online assistant because she has two kids.
And I just do.
Anything you can to save so you can leave him if you need to. I think it's so important. And invest, you know, I started investing tiny bits of money in like cryptocurrency, so I just it's instead of spending my time at the mansion wondering like what outfit I'm gonna wear, or like how to decorate for a party. I'm like, I need to be like financially literate.
And that was me on The Housewives. I had a thousand dollars when I signed up. That was me on The Housewives. Everyone else was worrying about facials and diamonds and I was off to the races when it started, like already like off to the races. But that's why everyone was trying to play catch up with me for years. You know, that's because everyone wants to show how rich they are.
Yeah, what more? Women need? That mindset of just yeah, I'm showing how rich you are, I think is another part of the thing, like part of the problem. I remember saving enough to get a Chanel bag was five thousand dollars and I put it on and I'm like, I feel nothing, Like where's the sparkly magic I'm supposed to And so I'm like, this is dumb. I just have this sitting here. And so I'm like, okay, Like materialism is not going to be my answer to anything.
You're smart. You're smart, right, Like I.
Tried, and you know, hef did buy us a house. He toward the end of his life, he did buy a house in West Hollywood. It was like a five million dollar house. Who's us half it myself?
Oh? Okay.
At that point he had sold the mansion and so he could stay there until he died. But the mansion was sold, and so he bought this house in case anything went down and we had to leave or somewhere for me to go if something happened to him. So I did have that house when.
I left, and he left it to you. Yes, And do you do you think he loved you?
I think he loved me the best way he knew how you know, I.
Think you do more than any of the other people who was with you. Think he like was loyal toy in some different type of way.
Yeah, I think toward the end, toward the end, I respected myself more. Toward the end, I got my implants taken out, I stopped bleaching my hair, and I did notice that he respected me. He respected me more. And I would like to hope that Hugh Afner learned some type of lesson and compassion or you know, don't chase after the wrong things. But but I don't know, maybe.
Maybe well you were there at the end, like you were there when he died, and so was he. I don't remember. I didn't was he dying? Like was he in or was he just do you know what I'm saying? Was he in hospice or something? Or he just you know what I mean? Like, did you know he was
about to die? Because when people are sort of in hospit and like different people are walking through to like say their last things, some people do hear people say things that they've never heard, Like I was wanting that from my father in hospice, and he was the exact same way to till his last breath, Like I was trying to get something that I was never going to get. So what was that like for you? Was there some humanity? Did you get some connection and like him realizing what
he had done or that it was fucked up? Or did he become somebody? Did he have some realization?
I don't think that that he felt anything he did was fucked up his whole life. I think because of the narcissism, he just didn't believe that he did anything wrong. He got sick pretty quickly. It was a urinary tract infection. It was a regressive strain of equal A bacteria. Only one antibiotic was sensitive to it, so we tried that it didn't work. He went into sepsis. I you know, we had to just start IVS and things on him.
And I remember asking him like, are you okay? And he said, you know, I'm okay with kind of a defeated tone, and that was the last thing he ever said. He just yeah, I got worse and worse, and I had to make these decisions at the end of his life. It was hard because he never wanted to go to a hospital and he said, I want to just die
in my bed. And so he went into sepsis, and the doctor said, if he stays here, he's going to die, but if he goes to the hospital, like maybe there's a thirty percent chance of him living.
Wow.
And so I'm reading this advanced healthcare directive that somehow I'm like, how am I named? Is? Hugh Hafner's like the deciding person on this? And you at the time when he died, I was thirty one.
Well okay, so you're thirty one and you're the person that's deciding what he's whether he's going to take a thirty percent chance or stay home. So let's hear this now. It's insane.
I know. It said something about if I have a terminal illness, Like I just want to stay home, but if I can be saved, then take me somewhere or whatever. So I'm like, okay, he could potentially be saved. It's bacterial infection. Do we just take him? Do we what do we do? He was so bad, you know, like, okay, we might take him and just even moving it might
be so difficult and thirty percent chances of survival. I'm like, I'm crying, and I stepped out of the room because I didn't want him to hear any of this that's going on. And I was talking to his assistant and his estate attorney. And while I was trying to decide this in the other room, one of the nurses came into where I was and said, you know, he's gone.
Oh thank god, you didn't have to make that decision.
So he decided. Yeah, he decided for us.
But did you were you sad when he was dying or like, were you kind of almost relieved? Like people have weird thoughts that they're not supposed to be having when someone's dying. That's been traumatic for them, So will you kind of relieved that he died or like not wishing it? But like, you know what I mean, were you conflicted? Because I mean, this is crazy that you had this experience with him and now you're the person that he's left to make this decision and you're crying
and what were you crying? Why were you crying?
I think it all happened so fast, and the topic of death is hard for me, so it was just going through that again. And once he passed away, I remember like, I don't even want to know what day it is. I don't want to know what time it is. And I felt guilty, which is strange. I felt like, oh, maybe there's something we could have done differently for him.
And yes, it's weird, and I think it's how people would feel if they were in a cult, you know, and the leader died, you'd feel sad and confused and guilty. And yeah, and it took time. I put out a statement, a very positive statement, but it took time. It took maybe five years to truly like peel it away and and understand.
I believe that going through these things that are so abnormal that you thought was normal is it takes a long time for it to get out of your body, like you could be away from it but like for it to like on a cellular level. Leave it's very you know how that goes with any like and death is confusing anyway, like you don't have to two things can be happening at the same time. You can think he's a disgusting pig, but you also you're Some children
love parents that put out the cigarettes on them. They want to go back to them like that happened. Like so you can feel a feeling two conflicting feelings like it's not binary.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
I'm speechless. Wow. So how does it feel to have written the book? Did you get everything out that you wanted to say? Did you forget things? Did you block things out? And like, honestly are people judging you? Like where where is all that?
Oh? Well, I feel like the book could have been, you know, three times as long. But I you know, I've I had stories and I crafted them together in a way that I thought told it in the best way. And the book has been healing. It's resonating with so many people. I've had women reach out to me, so many women reaching out like, oh, playboy was my dream. And as I sit in my normal house in a town no one's heard of in Indiana. I'm, you know, grateful that it didn't happen for me, and thank you
and thanks for lifting the lid and being light. And I'm going to have my daughter read this book. And you know, it's the book I wish I have when I was twenty one, because it was nothing, nothing like that.
I like it as a book for when someone who's twenty one. But I like for you what you were saying about your friend who's in that marriage. Like I think that you're somehow like listening to you talk about somebody in a bad relationship, prepare themselves, take care of themselves, not just make some rash decision, because so many women
are controlled by a situation. And you brought up financial abuse, which happens a lot and divorce, Like some people just want to say uncle and get out, and they'll settle for almost nothing because the the and it's usually the man, sorry, is keeping the lights off, like they won't turn the electric bill on, and you're like begging them, or they're controlling the custody schedule. And I went through ten years as a wealthy, successful woman who is you know, has
some power being tortured in a divorce. So like you can, you can help women lock the door before they get robbed, like just you know, just because you're if you're miserable, okay, well get your shit organized. Like you sound like you were sort of miserable and in something bad, but something told you to be preparing yourself.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I do really help to help a man. Like when they read the book, and you know, the end of the book, I talk about these girls and I cannot read the end back without crying because these girls would write into hef as young as eleven years old and they would say, you know, I got a playble white bedspread, and you know, what does it take to be part of the mansion? Like what does it take to be up there? Like one day I'll be there, and like what does it take?
It's like you have to you have to lose yourself completely. That's what it takes. And I don't recommend that to anybody.
But you found yourself now, yeah work in progress. Yeah wow. And then and what about his family? So you said he had a crazy family with his family growing up, and then he has kids, which is like I don't believe that. I can't believe he has kids, Like I don't.
I don't think he could either. Me. I don't think he could either. He's he you know, he always said to me, I'm not a good father. He said that he didn't want the second set of kids, but it was like having his own grandchildren, and you know, they were coming in the room when he would act like he was busy, and he just didn't know how to be a dad, like I hate Yeah, I didn't know how to connect. Didn't know how to be a dad. It's hard. And I think he's just so used to
being gross with women his whole life. I remember Christy, his daughter, who was CEO for so long, came into the room when we're playing cards and kissed him like you know, between cheek and mouth like here and and then he's like yummy, and I'm just like I'm just thinking ew. Like he he can't like switch his brain to daughter.
Everything has to be transactional sounds like like yummy.
You don't say that to your daughter. That's gross?
Yeah, right, he didn't. Yeah, the difference between that's creepy him.
Its constantly imperv mode.
Yeah. Exactly what do they think of all of this? Have they?
Have?
They expressed publicly disapproval of this book or Holly's book or in general, or they're not even like.
No, I haven't. I spoke to Marston yesterday, and you know his two youngest kids are closer in age to me, so you know I really like Marsden care about him, and yeah, I mean I don't have a bad relationship with them. I know that Kimberly have ex wife made some statements about defending him, and the first thing I thought of was I met her once in person, but my other interactions with her were all of her naked.
He had huge naked pictures of Kimberly, like in the gym and in the library, and I'm thinking, like, if that's not objectification, what is right? And how could you defend a man that had your naked pictures all over the house for anybody coming to a party to look at? Your own children are coming in the house and staring at their mom naked on the wall, Like, come on, how how much longer can you defend this man? I have no idea.
Wow, Wow, I mean I'm gonna cry. I feel for you as a twenty one year old girl, I really really do. So you're still so young and it's great that you have so much of life ahead of you. And yeah, I guess that was you and locking the door now before you get robbed because it won't happen again.
Thank you.
Yeah, well, I hope that is the book doing incredibly well.
I just got word that it's a New York Times bestseller.
Yay, oh immediately amazing first week. Yeah all right, well, congratulations. That means that you're you know, and you should reach out to Holly and Bridget or maybe all of us will have a conversation on here one time. I think this is a topic, I really do.
I would love to come on here with them, with you, and.
I'll ask them because I think it reminds me of situations I've been in where like people don't like each other and they don't even really necessarily have a good reason, and this guy has done so much damage. So you all have such a word to spread as women who
all got sucked into something. Okay, yes, walking into it knowingly, but later you know, you could help young girls not get traumatized, and you'd you know, so anyway, I appreciate the conversation and really the being so open and honest, and congratulations on the book and on everything else.
Thank you, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Amazing, awesome, have a great day, Thank you. Thanks bye. Wow that was something else. She was lovely. I was reading my I have multiple pages in front of me of the story. I was thinking this was like prostitution and going in there, it had to be strategic. And you know, I learn a lot because I mean, a twenty one year old girl, you know what, to me is kind of still a child, like it really really is.
We could say whatever we want and you could be legal to vote, but like twenty one is really young.
Like I mean, if I have assistants that are working here that are twenty four, pau wall be like they're babies, Like you know, not to be rude, but like you know, and a lot of them are way more babies than I was at that age because I grew up in a very abusive, fucked up alcohol ridden oblimia, gambling, physical abuse, being dragged, calling the cops like that doesn't count, Like, yes, I was mature because I was an adult when I was a kid. That you don't want that for anybody else.
And so like these kids that get preyed upon by the Jeffrey Epstein's, by the Harvey Weinstein's, by the Hugh Hefner's, by all the scumbags that were at that party, many of them. I know, so I you know, I think it's an interesting conversation. I was fascinated that she was like, you know, squirreling her chestnuts, like she was hoarding her
chestnuts as a squirrel while with him. That was when I was like, each time I have a conversation, like something comes out that these girls are so desensitized they don't even think it's like newsworthy, and I'm like, what the fuck? Like Holly too, so they didn't get paid to be on this show, Like crazy interesting, really really really interesting conversation. Wow, I'm like speechless. And then that these women turn against each other under the realm of a man leading a cult. It's crazy.