Brooks Nader Suits Up as a Playboy Bunny for "Playmates" as Crystal Hefner's Pushback Gets Louder

Brooks Nader was spotted on a Beverly Hills set this week in the one costume everyone recognizes: the Playboy Bunny suit. She filmed scenes for“Playmates”for roughly five hours, though her exact role hasn’t been revealed. The film is directed by Lorraine Nicholson and loosely based on her own upbringing at the Playboy Mansion. The cast is stacked, with Bill Pullman as Hugh Hefner, Jessica Biel as his wife, and Lily-Rose Depp and Indiana Elle also on board.

The costume is the headline, but the subplot is heavier. Crystal Hefner, Hugh Hefner’s widow, has publicly asked Jessica Biel to reconsider playing his wife. In her statement, she said she was actually his wife and that she experienced sexual, emotional, financial, and physical abuse in that relationship. She also asked everyone involved in the film to listen to the women who lived it before Hollywood turns the story back into nostalgia.

So the conversation around“Playmates”is now two conversations at once: a buzzy casting-and-costume watch, and a real debate about whose version of the Playboy era gets told. Neither one is slowing down anytime soon.

Where do you land? Does a film like this owe survivors a seat at the table, or should it stick to the story it set out to tell?