The model and the “Playboy” founder were married from 2012 until his death in 2017, after which she began to share disturbing accounts of life inside the mansion.

Crystal Harris says she was ‘absolutely brainwashed’ while living at Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner

The model and the “Playboy” founder were married from 2012 until his death in 2017, after which she began to share disturbing accounts of life inside the mansion.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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August 17, 2026 8:04 p.m. ET

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Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris in Las Vegas in 2010. Credit:

Denise Truscello/WireImage

- Crystal Harris says she felt “absolutely brainwashed” while living at the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner.

- By the time Harris wanted to leave Hefner, she felt “so broken down and like damaged goods where I’m like, ‘Where would I go? I’m worthless. I’m useless.’”

- Harris married Hefner in 2012, becoming his third wife, only speaking out about her unhappy time at the Mansion after his death in 2017.

The popular *E! *reality series *The Girls Next Door** *presented a harmonious, white-picket-fence vision of the Playboy Mansion, the ornate Los Angeles estate established by *Playboy* founder Hugh Hefner as a kind of boarding house for his wives and girlfriends.

But Crystal Harris, Hefner’s third and final wife, tells a very different story of life inside those notorious walls.

“There would be naysayers,” Harris recalled to Firerose, the ex-wife of Billy Ray Cyrus, on Monday’s episode of Firerose’s *No One Asked Her *podcast, “there would be people that went against him, and I supported him and thought they were weird and wrong.”

Firerose could “so relate” to Harris’ experience, after saying in 2025 that she survived “narcissistic abuse” at Cyrus’ hands following their divorce the year before. She described the experience as “defending defending your abuser because you’ve been brainwashed to believe that they can do no wrong.”

Harris agreed: “I think I was absolutely brainwashed.”

Melissa Taylor, Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris, and Anna Berglund in Las Vegas in 2009.

Ethan Miller/Getty

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*“*Hef was old enough to be my grandfather. We [had a] 60-years difference. In the interviews I’d say, ‘Oh, you know, he’s like a kid! He likes to have fun,’” Harris recalled.

Looking back now, she asks herself, “‘Why did I say that?’”

The model-turned-realtor starred in the final season of *The Girls Next Door *after the departure of the series’ main stars, Hefner’s girlfriends Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. The series wrapped in 2010 and Harris married Hefner in 2012. They remained together until his death at 91 in 2017.

Despite his defenders, Hefner was a divisive public figure, and he faced a litany of posthumous allegations. Most notably, former Playmate Susie Krabacher accused Hefner of rape in the 2022 docuseries *Secrets of Playboy*. Harris detailed many of her own Hefner-induced tribulations in the 2024 memoir *Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself*. Just last month, she admitted that she regrets marrying Hefner.

‘Girls Next Door’ star regrets 5-year marriage to Hugh Hefner but is ‘grateful’ for 1 thing

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Harris walked Firerose back down the long road she herself trod from feeling brainwashed, to wanting to leave, to finally working up the courage to break free.

“When people say, ‘Why didn’t you leave? Why were you there?’ I felt at that point so broken down and like damaged goods where I’m like, ‘Where would I go? I’m worthless. I’m useless. I’m part of this man’s like sexual perversions.’ I felt like trash to be honest. I felt like this person had me doing all these things, and I just felt like worthless as a person where, if I left, there would be no place in the world for me,” Harris explained.

She felt “brainwashed” because “there was nothing out there that validated me. I just thought I was the crazy one because all of the media put Hef on such a pedestal, that I’m like, ‘Okay, if they all see him as this larger-than- life amazing human, there must be something wrong with me.’”

Madison has also detailed her own fear of leaving Hefner and the Playboy Mansion life, revealing on *Secrets of Playboy *that it was “something that was always lingering in the back of my mind, I think since the very beginning, was that, if I left, there was just this mountain of revenge porn just waiting to come out.” Like Harris, Madison “definitely thought I was in love with Hef,” but both women were ultimately able to separate themselves and start over.

You can listen to Harris and Firerose’s full conversation on the *No One Asked Her* podcast above.

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