Hugh Hefner’s widow Crystal has fired back after being denounced by comedian Jon Lovitz for expressing ‘regret’ over her marriage to the Playboy founder.
Crystal exchanged vows with Hefner at the Playboy Mansion on New Year’s Eve 2012, becoming his third and final wife when she was 26 and he 86.
They remained together until his death in 2017 at the age of 91, and two years ago she released a tell-all memoir about her life in his orbit and how depressed she was living inside of the infamous estate with the late magazine mogul.
Now, the 40-year-old former Playmate has posted an emotional Instagram video saying she felt remorse for ‘making myself smaller so [Hefner’s] world could feel bigger’ and ‘learning to stay quiet when I could have spoken.’
Lovitz, 68, a habitué of the Playboy Mansion who attended Hefner’s wedding to Crystal, was distinctly unimpressed by her disclosure.
‘Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?’ the Friends guest star sneered in the comments. ‘And keeping the money, after you sold it? And all the times your mother was at the mansion? And do you regret all he did for you? And do you regret leaving him and then coming back to marry him?’
Hugh Hefner’s widow Crystal has hit back after being denounced by comedian Jon Lovitz for expressing ‘regret’ over her marriage to the late Playboy founder. (Hefner and Crystal pictured 2014)
Crystal accused Lovitz of being ‘the Playboy Mansion’s biggest customer’ after he criticized her for taking Hefner’s money
Firing back at the actor, Crystal implied that Lovitz was a hypocrite and claimed that he was once ‘the Playboy Mansion’s biggest customer’.
‘People often reduce my marriage to assumptions about financial benefit, but that overlooks the reality of what I experienced,’ she told the Daily Mail.
‘My reflections aren’t motivated by money or resentment, but by honesty. I’m at a point in my life where I’m no longer afraid to speak openly about my own experiences, and I think there’s value in that conversation,’ she continued.
‘It’s disappointing to see someone who spent time enjoying that environment criticize a woman for speaking honestly about her own life. For years, there was an expectation that women should stay quiet to protect powerful men or preserve a certain image. I’m simply no longer willing to do that.’
Crystal then twisted the knife even further by claiming that Lovitz’s dog had repeatedly peed inside of the Playboy Mansion during the actor’s time as a guest inside the home.
‘We had also asked that Jon’s adorable rescue dog, Jerry, not come back to the mansion because he repeatedly urinated on the curtains and damaged the property,’ she said.
‘Whether that contributed to his feelings toward me, I can’t say. I don’t have any ill will toward Jon, and I genuinely wish him well.’
Although Hefner and Crystal signed a prenuptial agreement, she reportedly received a $5 million lump sum upon his death, along with a four-bedroom Hollywood Hills house he had bought her in 2013 that she later sold for a further $5 million.
‘It’s disappointing to see someone who spent time enjoying that environment criticize a woman for speaking honestly about her own life,’ Crystal told the Daily Mail in a statement
Crystal was a Playmate of the Month in 2009 and featured as one of Hefner’s extravagant array of lovers on his smash hit E! series The Girls Next Door.
She became engaged to Hefner for the first time in 2010, only to dump him the following year, five days before their scheduled wedding.
‘Hef’s lifestyle isn’t the most normal lifestyle,’ she explained at the time in a radio interview with Ryan Seacrest. ‘This isn’t the lifestyle for me, multiple girls around all the time, the Playboy lifestyle. I don’t know. I just wanted to be true to myself.’
She and Hefner reunited shortly thereafter and finally tied the knot at the end of 2012, to a blare of headlines about his finally having pinned down his ‘runaway bride.’
Among the attendees was Lovitz – a close friend of the groom – as well as Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball player Evan Longoria, no relation to Eva.
‘Do I regret marrying Hugh Hefner? Of course I do,’ Crystal said in the Instagram video she posted this Wednesday that attracted Lovitz’s derision.
‘I regret being in my mid-20s and thinking that marrying one of the most famous men in the world meant I had finally made it, that I finally mattered or had value,’ she said.
‘Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?’ he sneered in the comments: ‘And keeping the money, after you sold it?’
(from left) Krista and Karissa Shannon, Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, Hefner, Holly Madison and – as she then was – Crystal Harris are pictured in 2009
Crystal exchanged vows with Hefner at the Playboy Mansion on New Year’s Eve 2012, becoming his third and final wife when she was 26 and he 86; pictured in 2009 on his birthday
‘I regret the years I spent making myself smaller so his world could feel bigger. I regret learning to stay quiet when I could have spoken. I regret the version of myself that I had to abandon just to survive in that environment. I regret that it took me as long as it did to understand what was actually happening – like years.’
She acknowledged that ‘a lot of people’ had anticipated she would ‘stay in the story that was written for me – the grateful young wife, the lucky girl,’ rather than express a more negative view of her association with Hefner.
‘But I’m done living in that story. Yes, I regret it, and saying that out loud is one of the most honest things I’ve done,’ said the blonde bombshell.
In her memoir Only Say Good Things, Crystal confessed that she felt ‘relief’ at the task of procuring other women for orgies with Hefner because she was thus spared the ordeal of having to be ‘sexual with him all alone.’
She recalled an ‘endless stream of women desperate to get into the mansion,’ which for her ‘solidified the feeling even more that I couldn’t possibly walk away. The more other people wanted what I had, the tighter I clung to it.’
They remained together until his death in 2017 at the age of 91, and two years ago she released a tell-all memoir about her life in his orbit; the couple are pictured in 2015
After Hefner’s death, Crystal found love with a dashing Hawaii tour company owner called James Ward, whom she eloped with to the Cook Islands this April
However the group sex itself was not ‘about making love,’ Crystal argued in the book. ‘It was about power and control and leverage. It was a performance. I was auditioning for a part. I thought it was about my power.’
She painted a vivid picture of one orgy at the end of which Hefner ‘waved us off of him, almost pushing us to the side’ in order to ‘finish the job’ by himself.
At the moment of climax, his face ‘contorted as if he was in pain’ and she ‘panicked,’ believing he was ‘having some kind of eighty-one-year-old-man attack.’
While promoting the book, she remarked that ‘Hef was on the extreme side of narcissism, so I truly believe that he thought everybody really wanted to be there.’
In her view, Hefner imagined the women in his life ‘really enjoyed the sex, really enjoyed the old movies, loved literally everything he enjoyed,’ via the Guardian.
After Hefner’s death, Crystal found love with a dashing Hawaii tour company owner called James Ward, whom she eloped with to the Cook Islands this April.
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