The Recent Lineage of Hugh Hefner and New Zealand

American Playboy: The Life of Hugh Hefner debuts April 7

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One of the odd footnotes to American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story, a ten-part authorized documentary series dropping Friday on Amazon, is that the dramatic re-enactment portions were filmed on the other side of the world in Auckland, New Zealand. Starring Kiwi actor Matt Whelan as Hef.

That is certainly a more upstanding commingling of Hefner and New Zealand than what went down this month back in 2009. In a rather inspired April Fools’ joke, the tourism board for the town of Rotorua took out full-page ads in the country’s two main newspapers, announcing that Hugh Hefner had decided to transform the Tudor-style Bath House–the Rotorua Museum’s main structure–into his “Playboy Holiday Mansion.”

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