Kendra Wilkinson’s “really crazy identity crisis” led to her 2023 hospitalizations, the former Playboy model revealed to in an exclusive interview.
We caught up with Wilkinson, 39, last Thursday in Los Angeles at DirecTV Gets Real with People & Entertainment Weekly, where she told us about how she lost her sense of self while going from sex symbol to reality star to wife to mother to divorcée to real estate agent.
Wilkinson admitted that “coming back to the celebrity world” for the event was “weird” and “a little bit of a shell shock.”
“I feel like I don’t fit in or something,” she lamented before acknowledging that she does have “20 years of [reality] television under [her] belt.”
Wilkinson became a household name beginning in 2005 when she appeared on “The Girls Next Door” alongside late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s other girlfriends at the time Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt.
She notably married then-NFL star Hank Baskett at the Playboy Mansion in June 2009; they share son Hank Jr., 14, and daughter Alijah, 10, both of whom Wilkinson told us are “doing amazing.”
Wilkinson then starred on the spinoff show “Kendra” from 2009 to 2012, followed by “Kendra on Top” until 2017.
Her marriage fell apart — on camera — after Baskett’s alleged affair with a transgender model was revealed. She filed for divorce in April 2018, and the case was finalized the following February.
After obtaining her real estate license in June 2020, Wilkinson went on to star on “Kendra Sells Hollywood,” which aired from 2021 to 2023.
“It was the hardest hardest challenge of my life to go from Hollywood to real estate because the majority of people already assumed they knew who I was,” she told us. “They assumed that I passed my real estate exam for the sake of television. So there’s a lot of assumptions. There was a lot of barriers I had to break down, and it took a toll on my mental health.”
Wilkinson said she “went through a really crazy identity crisis,” noting that “being sexualized was a major part of it.”
“I didn’t wanna be sexualized anymore, and I wanted to just throw away that part of me that people once knew — like, you know, that wild, fun, crazy girl that I was on television,” she explained. “I wanted just to unzip and throw that costume away and just become a realtor, and be a mom and a realtor.”
Last September, Wilkinson reached a breaking point and wound up going to the hospital twice in one week after “going through a downward spiral of thoughts” and experiencing “a manic state of anxiety” for a prolonged period of time.
“I didn’t know how to breathe. I didn’t know how to function as a human being. There was a lot that I had to get through, and there was a lot of begging for mercy from God that I had to go through. It was a lot,” shared Wilkinson, who also previously credited therapy and medication with stabilizing her.
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She explained that she had to “learn how to think again, think positively and rearrange [her] thoughts.”
Now that Wilkinson feels stronger mentally, she revealed to us that she is currently “working on two [reality] television projects at the moment.”
“They’re gonna be fun,” she gushed. “My last show was a little bit depressing because I was going through these identity issues [with the] camera on. So I didn’t get a chance to, like, settle in and enjoy myself. So I finally feel settled in. I feel like I’m growing into myself. I feel like I can think clearly. I’m back to life again. I am brave. I feel like I can think positively. So now is a good time to really enjoy entertaining the world again.”
Wilkinson teased that the shows may document her currently nonexistent love life, telling us, “There’s a couple things that the audience hasn’t seen me do yet — one of them is dating. No one has seen me date yet.”
According to Wilkinson, she has “no idea how to date” but is ready to get out there.
“I’m finally saying, ‘OK, my kids are in a good place, I’m in a good place. Is it time to start dating? Yes, it is.’ So I don’t mind the cameras following that.”
Despite their rocky past, Wilkinson referred to Baskett, 42, as “a great father” whom she has repeatedly said she will “always love.”
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