Crystal Hefner details ‘weird’ life at the Playboy Mansion

Crystal Hefner started dating Playboy founder Hugh Hefner in 2009 and was married to him from 2012 until his death in 2017. Now, six years after his death, she’s opening up about what life was like in the Playboy Mansion, the former home of the magazine by the same name, where Hefner lived, and where The Girls Next Door was filmed and featured the life of Hugh Hefner and his various girlfriends.

On November 29, 2023 Crystal launched her podcast, Beneath the Surface and has been getting personal with the internet with what life was like inside the Playboy Mansion and what being married to Hugh Hefner was really like.

While speaking to The Messenger, Crystal Hefner talked about some of the “weird” quirks about living in the mansion that became a normal part of her life and that she just accepted as the way things were.

One of the main things she recalls is the fact that there was a curfew of just 6 p.m. in the mansion, something that she looks back on and thinks is “weird” now that she’s out of that situation.

“It was kind of disguised as movie nights at 6 or we have to go downstairs and eat and then go to the movie right at 6 so you have to be home by then,” she told The Messenger and continued to talk about the fact that she only had two nights “off” per week: Monday when Hugh Hefner would be with “the men” and Wednesday when he went to play cards.

Hefner says she doesn’t miss the fact that there were always visitors coming in and out of the mansion, saying, “I’m so introverted. It’s hard. People are like, ‘Don’t you miss the mansion?’ I am like, ‘I like my peace and quiet.'”

According to Hefner, she stuck around despite the constant visitors, weird rules, and other issues she had with the culture because she didn’t yet have an identity of her own or understand who she was just yet. The former Playmate is finally ready to share her story in her upcoming book, hitting shelves in January 2024.

Speaking to People about her book, she said, “Only Say Good Things is the honest story of my life, which is also the experience of so many girls and women who grow up believing that their worth comes from what they look like, and that their value can be given to them by other people, and also taken away.”