Crystal Hefner DM'd Jessica Biel Asking Her to Rethink Her Playboy Movie Role

Jessica Biel has been cast as Hugh Hefner’s wife in the upcoming film“Playmates,”and Hugh’s actual widow, Crystal Hefner, is asking her to reconsider. Crystal sent Biel an Instagram DM this week, saying she experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse during her marriage to Hef from 2012 until his death in 2017. Her request: don’t take the role if the film romanticizes Hefner or the Playboy world, and listen to the women who lived it.

The film’s team sees it differently. Directed by Lorraine Nicholson and starring Bill Pullman as Hefner,“Playmates”follows two playmates at the mansion and is not a biopic. Biel’s character, Hefner’s wife, is fictional, even though Biel was announced in the role on Tuesday.

The bigger conversation here is about how Hollywood handles complicated icons and whether the people closest to those stories get a say. Crystal, who published a 2024 memoir about her marriage, is clearly not staying quiet. Neither, it seems, is anyone with an opinion about it.

So what do you think: should actors reconsider roles when someone connected to the real story speaks up? Sound off in the comments.