Hugh Hefner’s widow, Crystal Harris, has been increasingly open about her experience in recent years. While she and Hugh were together, she defended him, but now, years after his death, she feels that she “absolutely brainwashed,” she previously admitted during an appearance on Firerose’s No One Asked Her podcast.
During that podcast appearance, she spoke about how Hugh’s reputation made her feel trapped and like there was something wrong with her. None of the content out there at the time truly “validated” her experience. During a more recent podcast appearance, she opened up about some of the things that people got wrong about Hugh and what he was actually like, in her experience.
Crystal said Hugh “tricked” people into thinking he was someone he wasn’t.
On October 27, Crystal appeared on Lisa Guerrero Unleashed, where she reflected on her relationship with Hugh. Somehow, she explained, Hugh had managed to convince people that he was “helping people.” In reality, she said, he was an “awkward” man who “loved to exploit women.”
“He tricked the world into believing he was somebody that he was not,” she said, per In Touch. “He tricked the world into [thinking] he was helping people, he was … liberating people [in the bedroom], and it was just a big joke.”
So, what was he actually like? According to Crystal, “he was awkward, [had] no charisma, [was] unattractive.” She added, “Somehow, he had people believing he was something, when he wasn’t.”
Previously, she described feeling invalidated by the general narrative about him.
Because while people seemed to experience him as someone who was charismatic and amazing, her experience as his wife felt a lot different from that.
“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,” Crystal previously told Firerose.
While Hugh maintained a decent reputation, she thought people would see her as “worthless.” This fear also stopped her from leaving Hugh. “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 sexual perversions,'” she recalled.
She added, “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.”
She said she did whatever he wanted her to do.
When speaking to Guerroro, Crystal described feeling “really uncomfortable” with some of the things that happened when she was with Hugh.
“I do believe that I did whatever he wanted me to do,” she said. “And if that involved [intimacy], then I just did what he wanted me to do. There were times that were really uncomfortable for me in the bedroom.”
She added that “things would happen that ended up just not being OK.”
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