THE REALITY STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HER HUGH HEFNER PAST, MANAGING DEBILITATING DEPRESSION AND THE NEW LIFE SHE’S BUILDING FOR HER TWO KIDS
By DANIELLE BACHER Photographs by ARI & LOUISE
While in the midst of a panic attack in early September, Kendra Wilkinson felt like she was going to die. “I was in a state of panic. I didn’t know what was going on in my head and my body or why I was crying,” she recalls of the terrifying episode, during which she was rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital with the help of her ex-husband, former NFL player Hank Baskett. “I had hit rock bottom, and I was dying of depression.”
Four months after her hospitalization, the reality star distinctly remembers her feelings of despair. “I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore,” says Wilkinson, 38, growing emotional in a family friend’s Newport Beach, Calif., home during her first interview since the mental health crisis. While it’s been 20 years since she first rose to fame at age 18 as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on the reality series The Girls Next Door, Wilkinson is just beginning to work through the damage done by her time in his controversial world. “It’s not easy to look back at my 20s. I’ve had to face my demons,” says Wilkinson, who returned to the hospital a week after her Sept. 6 hospitalization to begin antipsychotic medication. “Playboy really messed my whole life up.” She also underwent outpatient therapy three times a week at UCLA, tackling unresolved trauma largely stemming from her time living in the Playboy mansion and from her painful divorce from Baskett, 41, in 2019. “I’m so proud of myself for battling this. My two kids need me, and I can’t give up,” says Wilkinson of finding strength in her son Hank IV, 14, and daughter Alijah Mary, 9. “I’m in the rebuilding process, and I have a lot to look forward to.”
A Different Life“I was there to party and live out my youth,” says Wilkinson (right) of dating Hefner alongside Holly Madison (left) and Bridget Marquardt (in 2006).
For weeks leading up to her hospitalization, Wilkinson—who has previously opened up about her suicide attempts in high school and suffering from panic attacks during the breakdown of her marriage—hadn’t been eating or sleeping. She felt insurmountable pressure trying to provide for her kids while pursuing a new chapter in real estate, and she had cut ties with many of her close friends following her public divorce because of trust issues. “I’m my own worst critic. I was just sabotaging myself thinking, ‘What if I’m not taken seriously in my real estate world because of Playboy?’ ” says Wilkinson, who earned her real estate license in 2020 and landed a Discovery+ show, Kendra Sells Hollywood. “I didn’t want my past to affect my new business, and having it come up was triggering.” While still trying to gain momentum with her new career (since 2022 she’s sold five homes ranging from $2 million to $6 million with luxury real estate company Douglas Elliman), Wilkinson was devastated when her new show was canceled last year after two seasons. “I was isolating, hiding, blaming myself, blaming the world,” she says. “I was spiraling out of control and felt like I wasn’t strong enough to survive.”
As she continues therapy, she feels protective of her younger self. “I was on drugs at age 15, and I had a lot of issues,” says Wilkinson, who has been largely estranged from her parents, dad Eric, a retired biotech businessman, and mom Patti, a former Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader, throughout her life, and no longer speaks to her younger brother Colin. While her mom appeared on her show Kendra on Top (which ran for six seasons until 2017), they’re no longer in touch: “Reality TV can create ends to relationships, and it created a possible end to mine and my mother’s.”
A Fresh Start “It’s hard work, but I did it for myself and for my kids,” Wilkinson (right, at one of her first listings in 2022) says of real estate. Left: with son Hank Jr. and daughter Alijah Mary (in 2023).
When she left home at 18 to move into the Playboy mansion, Wilkinson was excited for a “wild” new life. “I was young, fun and dumb. I made a crazy choice to live with an older man,” she says. Now two decades after she and Hefner first began dating, Wilkinson has more perspective. “I got into deep regret [afterward]. I got to that point where I started hating myself [and asking], ‘Why did I have sex with Hugh Hefner?’ ” she says of the publisher, who was 60 years her senior. “I hated my boobs, my body, my face. I got to that point where I started hating myself.”
She’s learned that her experiences in the mansion—and the toll it took on her self-esteem— were bound to follow her into future romantic relationships. Mostly single since her split from Baskett, Wilkinson finally feels ready to date again. “I shamed myself and stayed away from anything sex. I almost became celibate,” she says of the past few years. “I’m going to start to have fun though.”
‘I’m so proud of myself for getting the treatment I needed’
—KENDRA WILKINSON
Still, her priority remains her children. “I look back at what happened to where I felt like I had to date an older man at 18. What drove me to that place, and why did I choose to do that?” she says. “These are things I’m trying to correct in my parenting to my daughter. What can I do to show her that she’s more than that?”
She’s also proud of how far she and Baskett have come. “Him driving me to the hospital that day was out of care. It wasn’t out of marriage,” she says of her relationship with her ex. “We’re co-parenting really well. That’s what divorce is about. We’re doing a really good job.” Wilkinson insists any lingering hurt from their messy split (Baskett faced cheating allegations, which he denied, during their nearly 10-year marriage) is in the past. “Honestly, that stuff fades through time,” she says. “To accept help and for Hank to drive me to the hospital was a huge day in both of our lives. It was a big day for my family and kids.”
Standing in the sand for the final setup of her beachside photo shoot, Wilkinson is beaming. “I have so much good in front of me. I have two of the most amazing kids who are good, solid human beings, and I feel like I just pressed a rebirth,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Whatever that hurricane I was a part of is in the far distance now.”
HAIR: TRACY MOYER/THE REX AGENCY; MAKEUP: AMY CHANCE/CELESTINE AGENCY; STYLIST: ALVIN STILLWELL/CELESTINE AGENCY; PREVIOUS SPREAD, DRESS & CARDIGAN: LULY YANG; FROM LEFT: JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE; JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGESSWEATER: LILYSILK; JACKET: LULY YANG; COURTESY KENDRA WILKINSON(2)
