Maybe this is the universe's way of redressing the balance of the past several too-good-to-be-true decades, but it's just not turning out to be Hugh Hefner's week.
First, he's relatively blindsided by former fiance Crystal Harris, who ( amicably and mutually, she claims) called off their wedding just five days before she was set to walk down the aisle. Now comes word that Hef is being forced to wave goodbye to yet another vestige of the relationship: namely, his TV show.
Turns out, it's kind of hard to air a wedding special when there's no actual wedding.
"A wedding special was planned and under way, but given the current circumstances, we're not moving forward with the special," a Lifetime rep confirms to E! News.
In the run-up to their big day (which was supposed to take place Saturday ), the now former couple had teamed up with the cable net to film all the behind-the-scenes prep for Marrying Hef, a two-hour, one-off special scheduled to air next month. ( Wonder where they got that idea.)
The camera crew had long been following Hef and Crystal as they got ready for the would-be wedding, and both had been tweeting updates on the process. The show would've aired on July 13.
It's unclear if Lifetime will try and repurpose the footage they've already shot (which, given the timing of the wedding's cancellation, would seemingly be substantial), but for now they appear to be taking a page from Crystal and Hef's playbook by cutting their losses and moving on.
Meanwhile, though rumors have surfaced claiming that the jilting was planned from the start and that Crystal would net an additional half million dollars from the network in exchange for calling it off on-camera, Harris' rep denied the accusations, telling E! News the rumor was "absolutely not true."