Playboy Mansion to Hogwarts: meet Hugh Hefner’s son Cooper and his Harry Potter wife Scarlett Byrne, who might just be Hollywood’s most unlikely power couple right now
Are Playboy’s jet set scion Cooper Hefner and Scarlett Byrne, Harry Potter’s Pansy Parkinson, Hollywood’s most unlikely couple? Maybe, but the two are going to be parents – again!
Cooper, the son of late media revolutionary Hugh Hefner, and his wife Byrne recently announced they are expecting twins in early 2022. It’s the happy couple’s second pregnancy; they welcomed their first child Betsy Rose last August.
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Cooper Hefner – Playboy royalty
Cooper grew up in the famous Playboy Mansion, home to legendary pool parties. But when his parents split up in 1998, Hugh built his ex-wife Kimberley Conrad and their sons their own mansion next door, reports Business Insider. Hugh started grooming his youngest son to become his successor when Cooper was 19. At 20, while still at Chapman University, he started to get more involved at Playboy Enterprises.
At the forefront of the Playboy legacy
Cooper was strongly opposed to Playboy’s controversial decision to remove nudity from its pages in 2015. He also disagreed with CEO Scott Flanders on the idea to sell the iconic Playboy Mansion. After a boardroom fight, Cooper took “a massive step back” from Playboy Enterprises, according to E! Online.
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It wasn’t until 2016, when his father decided to step down, that Cooper returned to the fold as chief creative officer. In February 2017, he reversed the non-nudity decision, tweeting, “Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem. Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are.”
Even Byrne has posed for the magazine
As part of his “Naked is Normal” campaign, Cooper even enlisted then-fiancée Byrne to bare all for a pictorial. Despite telling The Straits Times, “you won’t be seeing me in the magazine any time soon” in 2014, the Falling Skies actress went au naturel for the March/April 2017 issue. She also contributed her thoughts on gender equality too, writing an essay titled “The Feminist Mystique”.
Scarlett Byrne – Harry Potter alum turned TV star
The former Slytherin went on to find success in sci-fi and fantasy television, most notably as Nora Hildegard in The Vampire Diaries. Byrne, together with actress Teressa Liane, played the series’ first same-sex couple.
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Cooper the LGBTQ+ ally
Like his father before him, Cooper considers himself an LGBTQ+ ally and advocate. Hugh, who has a complex legacy and is regarded as an early champion of LGBTQ+ rights, cast Bond girl Caroline “Tula” Cossey as Playboy’s first openly transgender model in 1991 after she was forcibly outed by a tabloid, reports CNN.
Cooper is dipping into politics
Cooper announced in 2020 that he’s launching a campaign to run as a Democrat for the California Senate in the state’s 30th District. He told CNN, “I am deeply concerned about my community and our government and believe that right now it’s essential for new individuals to step forward and propose new ideas. I would not be on this road if I did not feel strongly that there was an opportunity to win and as a result, make a difference.”
Cooper, who is also a US Air Force reservist, was recently deployed stateside to help resettle Afghan refugees coming to the US.
- After playing Pansy Parkinson, Byrne starred as Nora Hildegard in The Vampire Diaries, portraying the TV series’ first LGBT couple
- Hugh Hefner’s youngest son is a US Air Force reservist who brought model Ines Rau to the magazine as the first transgender ‘Playmate’