BEYOND PLAYBOY

Playboy Twin Who Ditched Hef Reemerges for Rare Solo Interview

The cover girl and her sister left the Playboy Mansion 15 years ago.

The Girls Next Door star Karissa Shannon sat down for her first-ever solo interview years after leaving Hollywood.

Karissa was one-half of the “Shannon twins,” alongside her identical twin sister, Kristina Shannon.

The two moved into the Playboy mansion to live with founder Hugh Hefner as his girlfriends in 2008, when they were about 18–19.

By 2009, they were the main stars of the sixth season of The Girls Next Door alongside Hefner’s future wife, Crystal Harris, though Hefner and Harris were just dating at the time.

Seven years after leaving Hollywood, Karissa, now 36, gave her first-ever solo interview on the Lisa Guerrero Unleashed podcast in August.

Guerrero, a journalist who served as an Inside Edition correspondent for nine years, is uniquely familiar with Karissa’s background: She posed on the cover of Playboy in 2006 and hosted the Secrets of Playboy, a docuseries on A&E, in 2022.

“I tried to stay out of the entertainment business for a while because I did need my privacy. I needed time to heal,” Karissa told Guerrero.

Karissa and her sister left the mansion in 2010 and moved into the nearby Playmate House, staying on the property until 2011.

In the interview she gave Guerrero in 2022 for Secrets of Playboy, Karissa claimed to have undergone traumatizing events at the mansion, including falling pregnant with Hefner’s child and undergoing an abortion.

After wrapping up The Girls Next Door, the twins did Celebrity Big Brother in 2012, and opened their own beauty salon: GLAM Beverly Hills.

Karissa said she was first trying to live a “normal life” in Los Angeles, but paparazzi chased her down.

“I was like, you know what? Get out of the spotlight. Cut the light. Cut the cameras,” she said. “Let me go find out where I want to live, where I can be in privacy. No one knows who I am. Live a normal life.”

The sisters sold their salon and, after a short stint in Las Vegas, moved to Michigan to get a fresh start.

Karissa is now in a relationship and dreams of a family.

“What I want more than anything is to be like a housewife, be a mother,” she said. “I want to be able to give my kids what I didn’t have.”

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The twins were born in Michigan to a 16-year-old mother and 19-year-old father, and were raised in Florida by their paternal grandmother. They dropped out of high school to work and help her financially, starting their modeling careers at 16.

“I wish my kids could be astronauts and go to school and just like, you know, live their dreams and not be abused in any way,” she said.

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Karissa said choosing to give her first-ever interview without her twin reflected the siblings’ new, more individualized approaches to life.

“We were always pushed in our career to be the same person, dress alike, and do the same things,” she said. “But we’re really different.”

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They stopped posting photos on their joint Instagram account in July 2025, and are now pursuing their own interests.

“I felt like I wasn’t heard or known as just a person,” Karissa said of working alongside her sister. “I always felt like I was just thrown into that gimmick and it was still kind of fake.”

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Commenters were thrilled to see Karissa doing well.

“I have been wanting to know how Karissa and Kristina have been these past few years,” one person wrote. “I am so happy to see how well Karissa is doing. She sounds like she’s so much better and it’s incredible to see how far she’s come since Playboy.”

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Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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