Bill Pullman is playing Hugh Hefner for a director who actually grew up at the Playboy Mansion
Lorraine Nicholson wrote and directs. Lily-Rose Depp stars alongside her own mother, Vanessa Paradis.
Here's one for the 'didn't see that coming' files: Bill Pullman has signed on to play Hugh Hefner in an upcoming film about the Playboy world, which—brace yourself—also stars Lily-Rose Depp. The film's title is Playmates, and no, that's not the start of a dodgy joke.
Pullman, who's in his seventies now, is fresh off a Netflix project with the Duffer Brothers—The Boroughs—and apparently still has the energy for more, as he's even booked for the slightly surreal Spaceballs: The New One coming in 2027. You'd remember him from a string of films over the decades, and if the surname rings another bell, yes, his son is Lewis Pullman (the one out of Top Gun: Maverick). For his part, Bill Pullman's got CAA keeping his diary full.
Across the cast list, Lily-Rose Depp (who, for the trivia crowd, is Johnny Depp's daughter) is keeping busy—she had a turn in Nosferatu in 2024 and has another peculiar one, Alpha Gang, lined up. In between, she reunited with her Nosferatu director, Robert Eggers, for a Christmas Day release, Werwulf. She’s juggling agents practically on every continent—CAA, Markham Froggatt, Agence Adequat, and Lichter, Grossman.
The ensemble and story
Never a dull day with this cast: Indiana Elle joins as a co-lead, coming off her debut as Amanda Seyfried’s daughter in The Housemaid. Also turning up is Vanessa Paradis (the French music and screen star, plus Lily-Rose’s actual mother, which could make for an interesting time on set). Directing is Lorraine Nicholson, who wrote the script herself—and yes, she’s the one with the eyebrow-raising childhood.
- Bill Pullman as Hugh Hefner
- Lily-Rose Depp
- Indiana Elle
- Vanessa Paradis
The whole thing is pitched as a coming-of-age drama, loosely inspired by Nicholson’s own upbringing—which involved actual days spent at the Playboy Mansion from birth (1990, for the record) through childhood. Plot-wise, it centres on two girls, Elle and Anna, in Los Angeles, who strike up an unlikely friendship as they each chase different kinds of recognition—one longing for a magazine cover, the other a boy.
The writer-director, sharing memories in Vanity Fair, put it this way: 'I never went to summer camp. I never had an after-school activity. From the year I was born, 1990, until I was about 11, I went to the Playboy Mansion, because that’s where my friends were. There were the kids—like curly-haired Taylor, whose parents actually met at the Midsummer Night’s Dream party.'
She added, in what is now a rather infamous passage, that only about half her mates at the mansion were actually children—'but that didn’t matter. The adults who hung out at the Mansion, like Alison and Joel, liked to play too.'