Crystal Hefner claims the animals that lived in the Playboy Mansion were mistreated and malnourished.
“All those animals were so depressed and sad looking, you walk by the cages and you’re just, none of them were happy,” she said in a recent interview with People, which was published Saturday.
“So sad, those little birds,” she added. “Yeah, I feel like I was constantly crying for everything and everybody there. It was so sad.”
Hefner, who also claims the birds in the mansion were dying of thirst in her new memoir, “only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself,” has shared several unsettling stories from her days living in the Playboy Mansion and her marriage to Hugh Hefner.
She first began dating the Playboy magazine editor-in-chief in 2008 after she caught his eye at a Halloween party. They walked down the aisle in 2012.
They were wed until his death at the age of 91 in 2017. She has since reverted to her maiden name, Harris.
During a different portion of her interview with People, Crystal, now 37, described the iconic Playboy Mansion as a mistreated masterpiece.
“This was a beautiful English Tudor home — and my family is from England — on five acres in the middle of LA,” she recalled.
“But over time, I saw that this place doesn’t really get cleaned that well and there’s mold. It just felt rundown and gross after a while.”
In addition to the historic Los Angeles mansion and the animals within its walls being mistreated, Crystal said she often felt trapped with her husband’s girlfriends.
For instance, she was on a strict 6:00 p.m. curfew.
“The pantry staff would start frantically calling my phone at exactly 6:01 p.m.,” she wrote in “only Say Good Things.”
“And then I would run in, pushing through the heavy wooden door, and go find Hef, so I could kiss him on the cheek and show him: Here I am, I’m home, I’ve followed the rules.”
She also admitted she was never in love with the magazine mogul and that she felt she paid a “price” for living in the mansion.
“It seemed like a world of success and fantasy, but everyone’s having to sleep with an 80-year-old. There’s a price,” she told People.
