Anna Van Patten Joins Searchlight's Playmates

Anna Van Patten has joined the cast of Playmates, a Searchlight film set at the Playboy Mansion, according to Deadline, which reported the casting on 13 November 2026.

The film is inspired by the experiences of its writer and director, Lorraine Nicholson, who grew up at the mansion. It is her feature directorial debut, and she adapts her own original script. Searchlight is the film label that makes the project.

The story is a Los Angeles coming-of-age drama. It follows 13-year-old Elle, played by Indiana Elle, who thinks of the mansion as a second home. Van Patten will play Jade. Elle meets a character called Anna, played by Lily-Rose Depp, who is one of seven hopefuls competing to become Playmate of the Month.

Bill Pullman is playing Hugh Hefner, the magazine publisher who built the Playboy brand and ran the mansion for decades. Jessica Biel plays a fictional former Playmate who becomes one of Hefner's wives. Deadline noted that the character is not based on any of Hefner's three real-life wives.

Producers include Alex Orlovsky and Duncan Montgomery of High Frequency Entertainment, along with Lily-Rose Depp. Van Patten is represented by CAA and Range Media Partners, two talent agencies that handle actors' bookings and contracts.

A coming-of-age story told through a child's eyes, set inside a famous house, is a shape that takes a film a long way from the usual Hollywood party picture. Nicholson's personal link to the setting is the reason the project exists in the form it does, and the casting now fills in the people who will populate that world on screen.

No start of filming or release window has been announced so far. For now, the news is a cast list: a new director, a cast built around a central young performer and a veteran actor in the Hefner role, and a set of producers who have their own track record in the business.