Crystal Hefner says she was brainwashed living at the Playboy Mansion

Crystal Hefner is reflecting on her complicated relationship with the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

The former Playboy Playmate, who was married to Hefner at the time of his death, shared details about her life behind the gates of the Playboy Mansion during an appearance on the “No One Asked Her” podcast with Billy Ray Cyrus’ ex-wife, Firerose.

“I think I was absolutely brainwashed, but there was nothing out there that validated me,” Crystal said.

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“So I just thought I was the crazy one because all of the media put Hef on such a pedestal that I’m like, ‘OK, if they all see him as this larger-than-life amazing human, there must be something wrong with me.”

“I would watch interviews of his from the past and there was this one where he was arguing with feminists and a woman said, ‘Uh, let’s see you parade out here with a bunny tail on and stuff.’ And then she said, ‘Calling women animals,’ … and he said, ‘Women are animals; what else would they be?'”

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She noted, “At that time, I was like siding with him and … like, I’m going against myself while he keeps me in this dilapidated, gross home and I can’t see my family.”

Crystal, 40, recalled being under the watch of 70 employees during her time at the Playboy Mansion.

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“I remember when I left, I mean, it took him dying for me to leave, but when I finally left, I didn’t even know how to turn the headlights on in my car because I was always home before dark.”

She added, “Movie night was at six, and that’s an early time and I had to be there … so it was kind of disguised — the coercive control, like, ‘Oh, that’s the time for movie night.’ OK, that’s the time for my curfew and my control.”

Crystal began dating Hefner when she was 21 years old. The couple got engaged in 2010 when she was 24 and the Playboy founder was 84.

They called off their wedding just days before the ceremony in 2011 but later reconciled. Crystal and Hefner married in 2012 and remained together until his death in 2017. He was 91.

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She told Firerose that she struggled to leave the house after he died.

“I was so confused,” she said. “In the media, he was old for so long, so you just, you see him as kind of immortal.”

Crystal added, “I couldn’t stay in the bedroom we stayed in, but I stayed in one bedroom of the house for like six weeks. I didn’t leave.”

Shortly after Hefner’s death, Crystal told Fox News Digital she was thankful for her marriage to the late business mogul. 

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“He taught me love. He taught me kindness. He gave me life. He really did,” she explained. “He opened my mind, my world, to all of these opportunities and experiences I would have never in my lifetime been able to have.”

In her 2024 memoir, “Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself,” Crystal detailed more about her life post Playboy. Playboy didn’t respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about Crystal’s book at the time.

“I think after leaving the [Playboy] mansion and being away for five years, I was in a lot of therapy,” Crystal told Fox News Digital. “I realized that the mansion affected me more than I thought. I just wanted to tell the truth about my time there and hopefully help others.”

She claimed their nearly five-year union was “emotionally abusive,” and wrote that Hefner “could be charming” but also “cruel.”

“Over a little bit of time, I gained a bit of weight, and he told me that I needed to tone up,” Crystal said. “Then he started telling me what color nails I could have and couldn’t have. [I had to] wear more colorful shirts, wear ‘the flag,’ which means the Playboy logo on my body, somewhere on my shirt. I had to dye my roots, bleach my roots. If that was growing out, he would tap it and tell me to go fix it.”

Looking back at their marriage, she said that her late husband, a leader in America’s sexual revolution, was a complicated figure.

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“When I was told what to wear, what to do and to lose weight, I thought, ‘I’m going to be better. I can do better,’” she said. “I don’t know why my mind went there at that time instead of ‘How dare you treat me this way?’ But I’m not sure what compelled me to protect him.

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“Maybe, in a way, I felt sorry for him. Maybe, in a way, it was Stockholm syndrome, which I truly believe happened there because it was such a bubble. But I did feel compelled to protect him for some reason.”