Kimberly Hefner defends Hugh Hefner as Crystal Harris urges Jessica Biel to rethink Playmates role

Hugh Hefner's second wife Kimberly Hefner has defended the late Playboy founder after his widow Crystal Harris accused him of abuse.

The statement, reported by Variety on 11 October 2026, followed news that Jessica Biel will play a fictional version of Hefner's wife in the Searchlight film Playmates.

Kimberly Hefner said she was married to Hefner for over 21 years and that they raised two sons together. She described him as a true gentleman who was kind, loving, generous, philanthropic and a man of extraordinary character. She said she often told him that if you looked up the word gentleman in the dictionary you would find his name and photograph.

Kimberly Hefner met Hefner while modelling for Playboy's Playmate of the Month centerfold. They were married from 1989 until their divorce was finalised in 2010. Hefner died on 27 September 2017.

Crystal Harris, Hefner's widow, shared her account after the Biel casting news. Harris asked Biel to reconsider the role. “Please reconsider playing Hugh Hefner’s ‘wife’ if this film intends to romanticize him or the Playboy world,” she wrote, in a message reported by Today on 9 October. Harris said she experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse during her marriage.

The message was direct. Harris, who was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter to have made the request on 8 October, has spoken previously about her time at the mansion in her 2024 memoir Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself.

Harris met Hefner at a Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion when she was a 21-year-old college student. They married in 2012 and remained together until his death in September 2017.

Playmates is written and directed by Lorraine Nicholson, the daughter of Jack Nicholson, for Searchlight. Bill Pullman will star as Hefner. Indiana Elle plays Elle, a 13-year-old who considers the Playboy Mansion her second home, while Lily-Rose Depp plays Anna, one of seven hopefuls vying to be Playmate of the Month.

What makes this stand out is the clash of accounts around one screen role. Biel has not publicly responded to the request to reconsider.