Life Uncut - The Playboy Mansion , Hugh Hefner and the 60 Year Age Gap - Uncut with Crystal Hefner

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

The playboy mansion and playboy empire is surrounded by so much intrigue and controversy. Today we got to chat with Crystal Hefner. Crystal became a sexual icon of the 2010’s when she entered the playboy mansion at only 21 years of age. When Crystal turned 26, she married Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner who was 86 years old and news of this wedding circulated to every corner of the globe. Crystal has just released a tell all memoir titled “only say good things” about the truth of what really happened behind closed doors of the elusive playboy mansion.  We chat about: How Crystal initially entered the Playboy Mansion What life was actually like day to day How the exploitation of such young women was in plain sight to the entire world Finances inside the house and how much the girls actually got paid Sex inside the mansion The ‘reality’ of original reality TV - The girls next door The hierarchy of the ‘girlfriends’ What happened to all of the girls of the mansion Crystal’s regrets & why she is speaking out now You can find Crystal's book Only Say Good Things  You can find Crystal on Instagram   You can watch us on Youtube If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany, and I am so pumped about today's interview. It is intriguing, controversial, and she was a sexual icon of the 2010s. Crystal Hefner absolutely exploded into the world of media and pop culture via the Playboy Mansion at only 21 years old.

And when Crystal turned 26, she married Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner, who was at the time 86. And news of this wedding circulated to every corner of the globe. Crystal is not just the widow of Hugh, she is a world-renowned model, an entrepreneur, and also has just released a tell-all memoir titled Only Say Good Things, which is the truth about what really happened behind closed doors of the elusive Playboy Mansion. And finally, Crystal is reclaiming the one thing that she lost in her 20s, her voice. Crystal, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. Crystal, this is such an exciting episode because I feel like everyone has heard of you and growing up everyone knew the Playboy Mansion everybody knew Hugh Hefner and everybody knew his beautiful very young bombshell blonde wife which is yourself. Before we get into your story do you have an embarrassing story and accidentally unfiltered because we start every episode that way. I think just my decade at the Playboy Mansion was very embarrassing in itself especially when I think back to you know a lot of the stuff there like how Hef was 60 years older than me even when I think back to the like the sex stuff I know I'm like diving right into that

but that was embarrassing it was embarrassing having like group sex with strangers in my 20s and that was just so embarrassing and not anything I would ever want to repeat ever again I have so many questions around all of this because there's this bigger and broader conversation which I know we'll get into but this idea of like what you do and especially for in this day and age when everything is now in social media and online that the things you do in your 20s and like the digital footprint that you leave for yourself you may not feel the same way about that when you are in your 30s or your 40s looking back on that period of life and obviously you speak now so candidly around the regrets you have the trauma you went through and trying to almost like not reinvent yourself

but trying to make people realize that there is a very different version of who you are that exists can you tell us a little bit around what your life was like growing up and what led you to getting to the playboy mansion in the first place yeah yeah I think um well Hef's secretary once said you know like Hef takes in the broken ones or the ones with the broken wings and you know first I thought that was like oh that's cute but thinking about it more it's like yeah he takes in women that are kind of broken they come from broken homes you know I lost my dad when I was young and then my mom kind of lost herself so I felt a lot like really on my own I had a high school boyfriend sweetheart like really profound love in my life and you know he

died in the war in Iraq and yeah I was a lost broken insecure person and I remember being a teenager and seeing Playboy magazines and I would see these women and they were so beautiful and they looked like they were so powerful and had the world at their feet. And I thought, you know, I want to be just like them. And at that time, the celebrities were like Carmen Electra, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and they all had the like the big implants. And, you know, my boobs were like pathetic. And so I started trying to mold myself to maybe have more confidence, feel more powerful. And I think that's how I ended up at the mansion. You know, I got invited to submit my photo to go to a party. So I submitted my photo. I didn't think I'd get picked,

but I ended up getting picked. And that's where I met Hef. It was Halloween party 2008, which seems like so long ago. So you send a photo in because these parties, everybody knows how exclusive they are and they're so hard to get into. But I feel like at the time it was the party that everybody wanted to get into because that's where dreams were made you send a photo they pick you they say yeah she looks great bring her in what happens once you're there like what is really going down on the inside of these parties and how did you go from just being somebody that was supposed to turn up to one party to being an instrumental part of that world yeah I mean that's a great question because you know recently I went on Pierce Morgan's show and

he said to me, he's like, oh, the party was so fun. I went with my fiance and we had so much fun. It was so cool. Like, yeah, you're a celebrity and you can like, they roll out the red carpet for you. You just show right up and whatever. Like for me, it was different. Like I had to submit my photos. And then once I got picked, they give you the instructions and you pull up to a parking garage and that's where you park your car and then you get in a shuttle and the shuttle takes you over to the mansion. So it's not like you drive up, you know, like a celebrity would. Like in the back entrance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I got to the parking garage and then a Polaroid photo is taken of me. So I'm in my little skimpy, like French maid costume. And then

the Polaroids taken of me, I didn't think really anything of it, but I later learned that Hef takes those Polaroids after the parties and he goes through them and he rates them A, B, C. And and I guess it's a level of attraction and so the next party the A's will get invited and maybe the B's but then if they can't come then they'll go to like the C's and the D's and I don't think anyone's below D I think D's the lowest but it's a whole different experience for the other side of it the non-celebrity side so I took the Polaroid in the parking garage I got in the shuttle drove up to the mansion and you know the gates swing open and you start up this winding drive and there's a sign that says playmates at play and it's really cool and you feel like wow like maybe

like I've made it like to to go to yeah I had never seen a celebrity in my life and you just feel like wow you're part of something special uh the party was beautiful and it was like a lot the decorations were over the top and there were there were women like wow those costumes are so in like, but it was just paint. So there's a lot of just body painted women. I went with a very extroverted friend and we saw these empty cabanas. And then we saw this group of people kind of coming toward the house, like this wave of people. And my friend, she's like, oh, that must be Hugh Hefner. Like he's like coming out of the house to his cabana. She's like, come on. She pulls my arm. I would have just like watched from a distance, but she pulls my arm. We go over there. We see

half amongst like security and he's with a few other girls and they like unclip the velvet rope and he goes in the cabana and sits down and it felt like you're at a zoo and you see like the animals and the cage and you're on the outside and they're on the inside and and that's how it's supposed to be and then all of a sudden my friend starts just like over here like waving and his gaze he looks at her and then his gaze like falls on me and he motioned to his security guards to let me into the cabana. And it was such a, like my soul left my body because it's like, oh, now I'm inside this animal enclosure. What do I do? You'd been chosen. Yeah. I'm like, this wasn't part of the plan. Like, what do I, what do I do? And so I got invited and I sat

down right next to Hef and he asked me what I did for a living. And I thought, oh, I don't even have a job. I'm still in school. I was studying psychology at San Diego state, but little did I know like the younger the better right for him so so I told him I was studying psychology at San Diego State he said he studied psychology at University of Illinois and we got to talking and from there he invited me to stay through the weekend for these movie nights he said that that he had coming up so that's how it happened and that's how I first first was there how quickly were you brought into the fold like how instantaneous did that happen because I feel like this must have just been such a whirlwind yeah absolutely I thought okay this is you know

this is how the other half lives this is this magical wonderful you know at that point I'm like Playboy is the place of power and freedom and later on I just became very trapped but in the beginning it was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like wow like there's like ornate things of marble everywhere, carved wood. And it was beautiful. And I did think I'm going to do whatever it takes to stay here. And so what happened on these movie nights? Because you put these movie nights in quotations when you just told us about them. Are these nights that are sex fueled? And I say that because there's a level of ignorance from the outside, from people like us looking in that just think all that happens in the Playboy Mansion is sex, group sex,

grooming that's what we think from the outside so what was actually going down that first night I didn't know what was going to happen but right when we went into the house there's like a double staircase that goes upstairs and we just went kind of straight upstairs into Hef's bedroom so I just thought okay he's might be expecting me to like sleep with him and the first night I just met him so I'm like okay mentally I try to prepare myself for that real quick and yeah it happened and the the sex happened and I tried to be as detailed as possible in chapter five of the book because I think it's important to tell the truth and what goes on up there but yeah after that sex the first night I was assigned bedroom number five and then the next night was a buffet movie

and then sex after that and it went was the same throughout the weekend and then I went back home and when i went back home i thought oh how do i like move forward with my lost girl life after that just happened and then um have called me like that monday night and asked me to move in what were you thinking at that time like after this has happened and even when you say i had to prepare myself to have sex with this man which is sounds fucking hideous in and of itself but how did you grapple with what was going on in your life and almost make sense or reason of the fact that to live this life you're gonna have to have a relationship with this man yeah I don't know I guess everything everything has a price so at first I was like okay I guess

this just comes with it and you know I could be okay with this you know maybe if it's not like an everyday thing I could be okay with it so I just started that was when I first started like quietening down like the inner voice that's like hey something's wrong here and I just started stuffing that down and yeah I made myself okay with it because it's like I didn't really have anything else going in my life and I had lost like this really big love that I had so I just think I was probably the perfect candidate for the mansion. And what was the day-to-day like you've been assigned bedroom number five which means you're not the only person there what does it look like in terms of how many people at this point how many girlfriends are there how many

people are sharing Hef's life did you feel like you were friends with these women but there was almost a competition to be the main girlfriend because I'm assuming if everybody's there everybody wants to be sort of the top dog what did it feel like in that moment yeah I feel that you want to be the top dog because then you're the closest one to have and the closest you are to him the least chance least likely chance you have of being kicked out so i quickly tried to figure that out and at the time there were twins there christina and carissa shannon they were only 19 wow yeah it was sad i remember him like hugging them in his bed and like looking up because they have this big mirror above his bed and he's like my babies he's like has so and

they're sisters it's like i'm still trying to wrap my head around that like they're having a really hard time they just they were in rehab recently again and they're having a really hard time now in life and just thinking that he did expect these girls these sisters to hook up with each other like and he didn't for a second think like okay I could be doing damage to these women like I think he was so selfish and so now I've learned narcissistic that he just didn't think of anybody but himself it's also crazy that of the time it was such a pop culture moment as well and I know it was your life but it just absolutely permeated the news in every way it's crazy that there wasn't more outrage. And if that was to happen now, people would say like, fuck, these girls are

19 years old. Like, what are we doing? How are we glorifying this lifestyle? But those questions weren't being asked at that time. And if they were, it wasn't the loudest question and the outrage wasn't there. It was more intrigue and curiosity than it was really this question of toxicity. It's crazy to me because when I started feeling like, okay, something's a little bit wrong or off. But then on the outside, the media and the whole world is praising this man. They've put him on such a pedestal and he's an icon like globally. So it was strange for me because I started feeling trapped. I started feeling, okay, something's not right here. And it's the gross imbalance of power. And when people are perceived as powerful, I think the media just, I don't know,

cowards to them. What were some of the promises that he was making to the twins and to yourself and the other young women? Because there must have been something, a real allure. And it's not just the living in the mansion. It's not just the power. Was there, you know, promises of you'll never have to worry in your life? Were you given whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted? Was there an excessive amount of money heading into your bank accounts? Yeah, a lot of people, you know i get all these things like gold digger or all these you know the whatever like i'm like i wanted whatever a different life than i had you know i just maybe i wanted to find somewhere that i could really belong so i never had a you know i was always on the move my parents had never had

any money maybe i wanted to feel a lot like i belonged or like i was special but talking about money hef was i think about it now and he was financially abusive he would give us a thousand dollars every friday we would have to go ask him for it so we'd have to find him in the house and be like hey half like can we have our allowance today and he go oh have you been good this week like just like santa claus it's so embarrassing and then we go yes another embarrassing story so we go this is definitely an embarrassing story going into his room asking him for this thousand dollars each he pulls out the little key out of his pocket and opens this cabinet and brings out like envelope of money and then he would count 100 200 and then the next girl's pile 100 and then he

put it all together and hand it to us it's like oh have you paid enough attention to me this week have you done like have you been a good girl like here you go and the money was it was never enough to leave because he did that on purpose you know like let's give these girls just enough to where you know they need me and they're they're not going to have enough to leave but also i can imagine that the lifestyle that you're living is also incredibly isolating like your entire community becomes the people who are within that house because everything gets smaller because there's so many requirements of being there there's requirements of being available for media there's requirements of being available for shoots and also the requirements of being available to

him whenever he wants you which would mean that you probably lost even though you were already in a situation where you didn't have your family and your boyfriend who'd passed away but you did you lose your other friends your other connections that were around you as support systems before going in yeah I felt very lonely you know the twins obviously didn't like me because I became the number one girlfriend they were so checked out that they eventually left and yeah it proved to be too hard for them but yeah I felt very isolating and lonely and lots of anxiety almost like paranoia like I had this little room that was like an offshoot of Hef's closet and you know there's a big gap under the door and you would see just like shadows of people

like walking by so like oh is the security like listening to me so I was always sometimes I would just text my mom instead of calling her because I would be afraid that like my someone be listening to me what did your mom think of you doing this at the time at first she liked coming up to the parties and Hef and I would go down to the parties not for long and go back up and then my mom would stay down there and she liked it and I think I didn't really tell her the extent of what went on there I don't even know if she thought we like had sex with him like I don't think she knew and because my mom she's in real estate so I would just she would come over and I talked to her about the house and it's like uh you know she's British so we talked about it's like a

British style house and I would just not be fully open with her and so how long were you a girlfriend and fall before you got married to him gosh we got married he gave me a ring in 2010 I think the very end and Christmas Eve or maybe it was 2011 at the I don't remember now it's weird because I like part of me is just trying to forget yeah I mean I heard you speak about something it was such a powerful way of describing an engagement because normally you'd speak about an engagement and most people have a beautiful story around how they were asked to be married and you wrote this he said that I hope it fits was all Hefner said he never asked me to marry him and you never said yes it wasn't a question it wasn't a choice and then it went on to say that it was transactional

as all things were to Hugh wow yeah yeah so that's what I said because it definitely rings true he He handed me a ring. He said that he hopes it fits, which it didn't. It was too big. But, you know, and then everyone starts taking pictures. There's a videographer there. I didn't really have time to think about it. And later on, I reflected a bit and I just thought, OK, like if I say no to him, then

I probably have to leave tomorrow. I'm not prepared for that. But if I stay here, then maybe he wants a good PR story because it's the end of his life. and I already experienced like a love that to me that was really great. And so maybe that I've had that in my life and now I can, you know, I'll marry him and make him happy. I think I was very much a people pleaser when it came to like Habs needs. Was there any part of you in this whole experience that felt as though you did love him? I think early on when he expected me to have sex

with like multiple people in the room, I'm like, how can this guy really love me? And so from there I put like a, and the age difference. Yeah, it got hard. I ran away like the first attempt of getting married. I ran because we had filmed the Girls Next Door show and I found out that he got paid $400,000 per episode of the Girls Next Door. And it's not something I really wanted. I never even watched the show before. And he just said, oh, we're doing the show, me and the twins. And I didn't get paid anything for it so he got four hundred thousand dollars an episode and you got nothing yeah and then people will be like oh you used him for whatever I'm like oh cool like I think we all got used yeah if he if I used him then he used us too like Crystal how is it even

possible from a production company for one person to sign a contract that affects multiple other people I mean when you're not the property of someone they don't have ownership over you that you are signing or did you have to sign a contract like how did it work that you were in a situation where someone earns four hundred thousand dollars and you are nothing that's a great question and how they get away with it is I was asked to sign a talent release so basically I just just I signed that I release that they can use my like name and likeness on camera and it was never disclosed how much he was earning from this no I would overhear because he would do a lot of his calls on speakerphone and since my like room area is part of his closet i

would overhear him talking to the producer of the girls next door and talk about how they're going to make 400 000 and they're trying to get e to up it and and i just uh but at that time i'm such an idiot because i'm like oh i should just be so lucky to be here and like i'm the chosen one to like be on this show and but also you're a young woman that i mean you didn't as far as i'm aware you you were in the middle of a degree so you didn't even finish that and then you got extracted into this world where you didn't have any control or power you'd never been in that world so you're not to know that signing a talent release is signing your life away like that's something that they should be educating you on and they didn't which is also a form of control you just

said something that sort of stopped me for a second I know a lot of people will be interested in it you said he couldn't have loved me because he you know used to make us all have sex together or watch or what were those nights like when it wasn't just you and Hef and did you ever feel comfortable like you wanted to be doing it or did you always just feel like it was an expectation and if you didn't perform you would be kicked out it was definitely an expectation it wasn't something I ever enjoyed you know it's really awkward and uncomfortable being around you know your sex is a very intimate thing but then you're there with people you don't really know and you know I never really felt comfortable around Hef completely he never really took the time to

get to know me or anything so having that dynamic plus a bunch of strangers and we're all like having to be naked with each other it's uh yeah it's it's embarrassing I imagine you must learn to disassociate we hear about this idea of just like when you said earlier on this idea of just pushing your thoughts down like you would get to a point almost where you disassociate from the person that you actually are in order to do something so that doesn't completely traumatize you absolutely and I think that's when I first started doing like dissociating I found myself later like when I would in the recent past like go on dates like oh I went on a first date and we like walked around the neighborhood. And, and then I get home and I'm like, I don't remember

anything that we talked about. I don't, I just completely dissociated. And it's sad because I think it started there. You hear people talk about that happening, but not even being connected to yourself and just going somewhere else in your mind. It is a, it's a trauma response and it's so sad. And when you say you ran away, so you found out this information about the inequality in the money and filming and you ran away from the wedding essentially what happened well I was upset about the girls next door thing not upset but just I realized like okay maybe he doesn't like it's just constant reminders I'm not valued at all and when he gave me the ring when he asked me if it fits there were the cameras and video people people that I didn't recognize not the

regular ones. So I'm like, oh, okay. And I realized he signed on with the Girls Next Door producer to do a show called Marrying Hef. And it was a two hour wedding special. I believe on like Lifetime TV. I don't know about our wedding, like two hour special. It was going to follow me like going to the flower mart and picking out stuff and getting organized. And I found out that Hef was going to make $800,000 for the two hour special. He had come into the little area that I lived in in the closet and he brought me a like paper paperwork. And it was like, uh, he was giving me a talent fee of $2,500. And I had overheard him say that he was getting paid $800,000. And I finally stood up for myself. And I said, Hey, like, I know I'll be, cause I'm, I'm so introverted. Like they,

he had 300 people coming to the wedding we're getting like rsvps from like paris hilton like jean simmons i'm just like this is for something you know it didn't feel real to me i'm like this feels so fake and i didn't want so i'm like okay i'm gonna have to carry this show i told him i said 2500 fees a little bit like feels like a slap in the face like i know i overheard you like talking about how much you're gonna make maybe like 10 000 or something to make me feel little bit more valued. And he responded by saying, what are you in this for? And it took me back to like all the PTSD, all the gold digger comments by the press and all this stuff. And so I like ran out of the vanity. I've never like defied him before that moment. I ran out of the

vanity. I ran out the mansion and down the back drive and I was going to go to the park. There's a nice park close by. And as I was going down the back drive, there's a gate and there's also a security booth security you'll see me on the camera coming down the drive and they'll open the gate for me so as i'm going down the gate isn't opening like oh that's weird is no one in the booth and i overheard like i heard a speakerphone i heard hef's voice and he said if crystal tries to leave detain her and oh my god like okay this gate is not opening like i'm actually trapped here and so i thought to myself okay i need a better way to like get out of here And so I just like put my head down, walk back into the house.

Yeah, I plotted my escape because I didn't I did leave in 2011. Did he come to the table with any more payment for that show or did you have to accept that amount? No, he didn't. I left and they still filmed it and they still I think they bribed me with like a five thousand to try and be on it if it's just an appearance or make some comments. it's like when you finally stand up for yourself and realize your worth like people treat you better 100 but they can't keep getting away with the behavior but I don't know how to put this

without it sounding not how I intended in terms of like I feel so sorry for you that you went through that I feel so sorry that you you cop the gold digger comments but yet are not financially benefiting in a way that actually sets you up for any sort of future and yet are still where you are in life now you look back on and you fucking hate and regret like I I so deeply hate that you experienced that and I'm so sorry that this is something I'm glad that you have the agency and voice and you're able to tell your story oh thank you that's and sometimes I feel like I'm telling the story about somebody else or like like if I was my own yeah I don't know but thank you was there a prenup or what did it look like when you got married in terms of did you have

access to the bank account like a normal relationship would where you can do what you want or did he keep you on a really tight string and an allowance even into your marriage so when I ended up getting married to him there was a prenup it was like 45 pages something like that and it wasn't very fair the first attorney I took it to wouldn't sign it they said it was very unfair and I at that point I didn't even know that I could negotiate a prenup so I took it to someone else and I think the second lawyer who maybe they just wanted to be involved with like playboy or like having signed it but they signed off on it but it had strange things in there like I have no right to the bunny head like rabbit logo and I signed it and

I did think I'm like okay if I'm gonna be here I'm gonna try and do things a bit differently and I think slowly I you know I did start making money I really did on your own accord I thought to myself, like, okay, I'm not a celebrity, but by association, people care about me for some reason. So it's like when social media, like Instagram, like it was like 2014 and companies like teeth whitening. And so I'm like, okay, I started doing ads and I would invite them over to the mansion and like do shoots in the backyard. And I'm like, I'm going to make the most of what I can do here. And I taught myself how to DJ and Hef would let me go to like, I went to Las Vegas during the day and I would make like $7,500 for like an hour and a half DJing at like the Hard

Rock Hotel. And I just started stashing money and I started a loungewear line, a bikini line out of Australia, Viva. I started working with them and they're amazing. And financial abuse sucks. I know women that are in relationships that are being financially abused. And it's like, just save as much as you can, any type of like odd jobs or whatever you can do, like just save, safe, safe. And that's what I started to do. One of the things though, I mean, you've talked about so much about what's happening inside the mansion, but from the outset, it was like ground zero of reality TV. Everyone was obsessed with it. It was like seeing inside this life that nobody understood. It was so intriguing. It was so fascinating, but how much of it was actually real?

None of it. Nothing. They would say, okay, today you're going camping in the backyard. crystal you're gonna put on this bear costume and like scare people in the very beginning i sat down under the archway and the producer said okay i want you to say your name and say that you're not the new holly holly's the old you in my body i'm like cringed a little bit because i'm like oh holly's not gonna like this but i spit it out you know i'm not the new holly holly's the old me and that feud kicked off like the mean girl type vibe yeah i have never wanted drama on the show but the producer you know put it in there in different ways i did a like a playmate photo shoot on the show he made me a playmate i think he thought it would be a good storyline on the show

i wore a hat it was for the holidays and there was some like holly like the berries in the hat like oh look some holly and then it's like a record scratch noise like as if is they were just pitting us against each other shock horror yeah reality tv then was interesting like that's when the kardashians started like very i remember like seeing kim kardashian at like the reality tv awards and they were just starting it was just it was a weird time for tv then well it was also a time where in reality tv world they could get away with so much because no one really knew about it like now with reality tv there's so much more responsibility to the care of the participants to the mental health because we've seen the damage that it can do. But at that

time, it was like the height of exploitation. It was the height of being able to get away with everything because it was so new and there weren't as many rules. Absolutely. And they could get away with giving people no money. And so these people are like recognized and their people are going up to them in the streets and stuff, but they're like, can't even afford to live. It's very sad how how people were treated and i remember the kardashians they created businesses on the shows and so now like a lot of the reality contracts you sign like hey if you start a business through this show like we get a percentage so it's it's just like keeps adjusting as as time goes on to just i don't know it's it's it's just interesting and people have gotten taken advantage of a lot

on reality tv and they continue to and i think it is being called out still speaking of financial abuse. Talk to us about what Hef did to Marilyn Monroe. Oh, that is hard for me because his whole empire was started with calendar photos of Marilyn Monroe. He bought calendar photos that people heard of, but they had never seen of Marilyn Monroe. She was nude. She had no say. She made no money and that created Hef's entire empire and he paid her nothing and when he was getting old and he was not far from the end of his life he said I don't care about my funeral you know where I want to be buried and where he wanted to be buried was Westwood Memorial right next to Marilyn Monroe he had bought the plot in the 90s and I'm like this woman that he exploited created this

whole empire off of this woman and now she has absolutely no say and whose bones will be lying next to her so he literally just bought photos of her off the internet just that already existed rights the rights to them well not even rights i don't think it was rights back then he just you could just purchase a photo so anyone could have used it but he turned that into nude calendar then made his empire and she a couldn't approve it couldn't fight it and b didn't get a cent. Is that correct? Yeah. He collected enough money from wherever to buy her photos from a calendar company. I think he bought them for $700. I mean, I know things are changing in this world, but if anyone's familiar with M Radha's story around the photographer who released

nude photos of her, it's really fucking harrowing for a lot of young models who do nude photos as part of their, you know, when they're getting their books together or they're trying, they just want to get seen and noticed in the industry. And so they do what they might think are artistic photos but they're probably more nude than what they thought they were going to be and then the person who owns the royalties to those photos the rights to those photos is the photographer it's never the model they sign release forms that sign those things away and that's what's happened in this instance with Marilyn Monroe she has no rights to the images even though the images are of her the person who took those images has full rights and you can purchase the the licensing to

distribute it as you would which just sounds crazy but it's something that still happens to models today and it's only if they're educated enough to know otherwise that they can protect themselves yeah I just I think of Marilyn Monroe she you know pinup was really big then and she probably just went and did this shoot for this pinup company and then maybe the photographer convinced her to like take off a little bit you know that's happened to me before where the photographers are like oh hot fucking hot oh move the strap down a little bit and you know I've called all them out since because I'm like you guys are disgusting but yeah her shoot probably went a little bit further than she wanted to or you know she was obviously from a broken home and she was you know

in an orphanage and she like had to get married out of it to get out of it and you know this is obviously a girl who was vulnerable and people took advantage of that and it's sad yeah you have kept so much of this to yourself for so long the better part of six years and now you've decided that you want to tell your story and you want to have your voice and you've written your book You're also the president of the Hugh Foundation. How did the board react as the president of his legacy when you said, do you know what, I'm done protecting him, I'm going to speak my truth? Yeah, it's very interesting because I'm still on the board

and I'm on the board with his secretary that took over after Mary and his estate attorney, Michael. And I told them, I told them I'm going to be writing this book, I'm going to be telling the truth. and Hef's foundation sticks up for first amendment rights, which is like freedom of speech, freedom of expression. So it's like, if I, if I'm not allowed to do this, then it would be going against, going against all of that. But the last meeting I have with them, we were in the scrapbooks Hef has 3000 volumes of scrapbooks. And we did say like, he did a lot of things like positively

changed a lot of laws he donated a lot of money but he also was you know a narcissist and he was misogynistic guy and i don't know what the legacy looks like going forward like how do you preserve like a complicated legacy i don't know my only thoughts on it are if we can take some of the money we're auctioning more of his stuff and a lot of the art from the playboy mansion and if we can take that money and put it toward like women's causes then i think it'd be starting barely to start rectifying some of the damage but i'm gonna see how it plays out crystal how do you grapple with regret because i think we've we've interviewed so many people in our time and i think most people would say i don't regret anything it's made me the person i am but in this some of the things

you've said i feel like there's things that you have been experienced things that you've done that you deeply regret and that you look back on and you're like that's so embarrassing now for me how do you deal with that how do you overcome regret when now where you're at in your life and the version of yourself that you are what do you feel when you look back on those years that decade of my life was the whole thing was embarrassing like I am so embarrassed to have been part of that and played a role there but yeah looking back no, it's like, it's hard. I'm very hard on myself. And to this day, and I'm still trying to find my voice. I'm still trying to, you know, I started my own podcast and I got all these

horrible comments and like, Oh, I counted the time she said the word like, or the word times like I'm just trying my best here and if you don't like it too I had to disable all my comments on everything like if you don't like me just please like I can't handle it just leave me alone so I try and not give myself such a hard time and I do have friends that say you know you are really hard on yourself and you need to give yourself grace like give yourself more grace and also forgiveness like you're in your 20s you're in your 20s that's when most people make fucking crazy terrible decisions in their relationships in all aspects of life and I think you know when you come from the background that you've had but ends up in a world that is so otherworldly you were the victim

in this in a lot of ways and I think that the society likes to say yeah but you're old enough you made a choice like you were this you were that but then when you hear this your side of the story. There's so much more compassion for why you would end up making the decisions that you made. What do you want to say to people that say you could have just left? Why didn't you leave? And I think that's a question that I get asked probably most. And, you know, when I think about it, it's like, why, you know, why do people take so long leaving abusive relationships? You know, it's like oh the people are nice or the people you know you try and see the good side you're like no this is a person that's bad but sometimes good but it's a bad person that's sometimes good

and you just try and see the good parts and especially when it's someone who's also so praised by other people you know i have friends that are in bad relationships and some of these guys are like praised by the community or donate all this money and they you know so it's it's hard when the whole world is praising somebody and you're like, okay, what's wrong with me? I need to be better in this. And I don't know, I was just a broken soul that just was trying to have a better life for herself in whatever way. And yeah, and I just got stuck in some darkness for a long time. And when I wrote this book, I had no idea how it would be received. I literally had no idea. But after doing therapy, I started with stories and that, you know, and crafted into a book. And I just wanted to tell the truth. And I wanted to dive into the psychology aspect, like, you know, why did Hef become who he became? Like, he obviously had a broken childhood as well, just like I did.

And yeah, there's there's reasons everything happens. And I really wrote the book to to help other people and to tell the story. And I got an overwhelming response. And one of my favorite responses was the women were the women that said, oh, I wanted to be part of Playboy or I wanted that was my dream, too. And as I sit here in my regular house and wherever, like, I'm glad I didn't go for it. So thank you. And and I appreciate that. what's your life look like now oh so much better oh my gosh so I started traveling and I learned that I love you know traveling and I ended up in Hawaii and I fell in love with Hawaii so I bought a farm there so I have a like a six acre lychee farm that's so random it's so great I love it and I have three tiny houses there and so I go back and forth between California and Hawaii and I'm finally in a relationship that's normal and that's like respectful and kind and yeah I think if if anyone treats you like less than nurturing like just leave the situation but it's taken me a while it's taken me a string of bad relationships to get

to this good one so I think I finally have learned my lesson and I wish that for everybody because yeah bad relationships can really throw you yeah also takes some people a really long time to get to the place of learning the lessons yeah and I think a big part of it a huge part of it for me is like respecting myself because when you respect and love yourself so much if someone comes through and they don't treat you very well you'll get rid of them like fast and so I think it's really important to have that like respect and love for yourself crystal thanks so much for sharing your story it's genuinely so interesting and it's it's very easy to forget that you're a real person that lives that because to a lot of people from the outside you become a character you're on tv it's

not somebody that's actually living in someone's closet like some rich man's closet being given an allowance to control every week like those little parts that you have enlightened the world with they're going to change people's perspectives of what that time was like I already have a completely different perspective and insight after this chat today I think you're wonderful and I am genuinely very grateful that you came to share your story today oh my gosh I'm grateful too and thanks thank you both so much you're both so amazing and this has been such a great chat and safe space I I really appreciate that. I genuinely love that chat.

I'm so grateful that she came on today. I've always wanted to know what went on inside those walls. Like growing up, I had so many questions and the fact that I got to ask her is, I don't know, I just feel like I ticked some sort of life box I didn't even know I had. A real life Playboy bunny. Yeah, real life Playboy bunny. But I think it's so important to look back on some of these things that back in the, you know, the early 2000s, 2010, things that now when you know better, you do better and

you look back on those situations and you go wow maybe that was far more problematic than what we realized at the time and also this idea that no matter what it is that you've been through no matter who it is that people perceive you to be you can always rewrite your own story all right guys that is it from us you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because we love love