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
- 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’
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.
Here are just a few things you might not know about the proud parents.
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.
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.”