Jessica Biel joins the Hugh Hefner Playboy movie with Lily-Rose Depp
Jessica Biel has joined Searchlight Pictures’ Hugh Hefner Playboy movie, set at the Playboy Mansion, alongside Lily-Rose Depp — and the role she’s playing has now been revealed.
Here we are then: Jessica Biel has signed up for a new drama called Playmates, which is set at the infamous Playboy Mansion. That might sound rather salacious, but bear with—it’s not quite the biopic you might first expect.
Playmates is Lorraine Nicholson’s first outing as a feature director.
A Playmate That Never Was
This one’s coming from Lorraine Nicholson—she’s both writing and directing, and yes, that Nicholson surname is exactly who you think it is. The film’s loosely inspired by her own childhood visits to the Playboy Mansion (not something everyone can stick on the parental permission slip). Lorraine actually detailed those memories in a Vanity Fair essay back in 2024, so the film’s not just pulled out of thin air. Still, don’t expect a blow-by-blow account of Hugh Hefner and his not-so-normal household—Jessica Biel is playing a completely made-up ex-Playmate, someone who’s married to Hefner but isn’t lifted from any of his real wives. It’s a composite for dramatic purposes, so historians need not nitpick the timeline.
Who’s Who in Playmates?
- Jessica Biel—the fictional former Playmate, occupying that strange territory between wife, confidante and household glue
- Bill Pullman as Hugh Hefner—yes, he’s back onscreen with Biel after their stint on The Sinner
- Lily-Rose Depp—she’s down as Anna, a would-be Playmate angling for that photoshoot-of-the-month status
- Indiana Elle—the fairly new face, portraying 13-year-old Elle (a character inspired by Lorraine’s younger self, basically growing up with the mansion as her own peculiar playground)
The actual core of the film is the relationship between Elle and Anna—one’s accustomed to the mansion’s weird brand of luxury, the other’s there with wide eyes and a bucket full of ambition. The whole thing’s less about Hefner parading about in a dressing gown, more about a coming-of-age story in the oddest of LA’s gilded cages.
Searchlight Pictures snapped up the script, so the production is properly underway—no vanity project cobbled together in someone’s hot tub. If you’re expecting The People vs. Larry Flynt redux, adjust your goggles: this is a fictional account drawn from the director’s own vantage, not a tell-all exposé or family tree drama.