Holly Madison Talks About The Hell That Is Playboy Mansion Life

Ex-Playboy Bunny Holly Madison is speaking up about her time in the mansion.

“Women would come up to me, and say, ‘Don’t you miss the mansion?’ Or, ‘I’m sorry Hef didn’t marry you,’” Madison recalled during a recent interview with BuzzFeed News at her home. “I was like, can’t you see I’m doing so much better on my own?”

It’s safe to say that after the revelations in Madison’s just-released Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, she has successfully squashed any such questions in the future.

It tells the story of Madison's time with Hefner from 2001 to 2008. It also talks about how girls on reality TV are meant to appear dumb: “Around the turn of the millennium, it became fashionable for women to appear stupid — to get by solely on their looks and to be concerned only with fame and materialism. Some of the effects of that moment in the zeitgeist still linger today.”

Madison says of Down the Rabbit Hole: “I felt like I had something to say about being in the midst of that whole thing that was going on where Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson and Kendra were so celebrated — and I was a part of it too — for being dumb on TV. Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was to show the other side of it.”

Personal collection of Holly Madison. / Via HarperCollins

When Madison was 20, she moved to Los Angeles and worked at Hooters which led to her being invited to a party at the Playboy Mansion.

After a year of being a regular at the mansion, and with both of her roommates moving out, Madison was desperate to stay in Los Angeles, and decided she’d try to be one of the girlfriends. (A spot had opened up.) After all, she had been assured that none of them actually had sex with Hefner, and it seemed like a nice — and free — place to live.

The decision immediately cut her off from friends outside the mansion. Madison said they would say, “‘Ew, gross, you hooked up with an old dude?’ I thought I was an adult and thought I was making my free choice. And I was. But I wasn’t sophisticated or really prepared. And kind of got in over my head. … I could understand how people thought it was strange. But I guess I wasn’t comfortable enough to explain why I thought it would be fun or why I thought it would be a good idea.”

Madison when she was 20.

Madison soon discovered it wasn't a good idea to move in. As she learned on her first night out with Hefner and the girlfriends, sex was a requirement of living there.

The girls and Hefner would go out for "Club Nights" on Wednesdays and Fridays and Hefner offered Madison a Quaalude, telling her, she writes in Down the Rabbit Hole, that “in the ’70s they used to call these pills ‘thigh openers.’” She turned him down, but did get drunk, and by the time they all went back to the mansion, she was told that it was time to go to Hefner’s bedroom.

Tina Jordan was Hef's No. 1 girlfriend at the time (a spot Madison would later occupy). She brought her into the room which was, she writes, “like an episode of Hoarders.” With hardcore porn playing on two TV screens, Hefner masturbated as the women play-acted lesbian scenes. No one was into it. A girlfriend whose name Madison changed to Vicky in the book pushed her toward Hefner while urging him to “be with the new girl.” Madison writes, “It was so brief that I can’t even recall what it felt like beyond having a heavy body on top of mine.”

And some of those women had taken Hefner’s Quaaludes. “They weren’t commonly available then — I don’t even know exactly how he was getting them,” Madison said. "I know most girls my age were not doing them, and didn’t know what they made you feel like. And I’m sure a lot of those girls didn’t know what they were at all."

There had been no discussion about whether she wanted to have sex with Hefner.

Did she ever consider to it be non-consensual? “I think everybody just assumed because I was there and making it clear that I wanted to be a girlfriend that I knew something went on,” Madison said. “And I knew something went on. I’m not stupid. But none of the girls would ever really admit to it or talk about it.”

The group sex occurred twice a week. “It was always Wednesdays and Fridays after the club,” she said. “It was always exactly the same because that’s just how he likes to live his life.”

It was all ritualized, featuring the rotating cast of girlfriends. “They knew it was kind of a quote-unquote requirement for living there, and expected,” Madison said. “And it had kind of a chore vibe, I felt. The girls would stand there and they’d kind of like put on a show to create a silhouette that something was going on. Hef couldn’t hear very well out of one ear, and I could hear them all talking and making fun of what was going on and gossiping.”

Her story of that first night is the only time she reveals those sorts of intimate details in the book. That’s always what people want to know, she said. “I talk about how that situation made me feel,” Madison said. “Like, I didn’t like being part of a group thing, and it didn’t make me feel good about myself. But I didn’t want to oversensationalize the sex, because to me that wasn’t the most important issue. It was only one of the things that made me feel bad.”

Writing about this part — her entrée to living in the mansion and its obligations — was the hardest for Madison. “I kept — yeah, it was hard for me,” she said. “I can’t even explain why. I think because I made that decision and really felt like I sold myself out.”

Being a girlfriend in the mansion wasn't easy. Besides the prescribed sex, on evenings when they weren't required to be home, there was a 9pm curfew. 

Emotionally Madison had a hard time. She felt bullied by some of the other women, especially Vicky, whom she had thought was her friend. Hefner was withholding, treating her like she was stupid, and criticizing her looks. She wasn’t allowed to wear red lipstick; he hated her short haircut, telling her, “You look old, hard, and cheap.”

She developed a stutter, and as a consequence tried to speak as little as possible. Less than a year after living there, she contemplated killing herself, writing, “Drowning myself seemed like a logical way to escape the ridiculous life I was leading. I just couldn’t take my misery anymore.”

Madison wanted help, she wrote, but Hefner wouldn't allow her to see a therapist so she got antidepressants from her doctor. She was too ashamed to tell her parents what was happening, she said.

With Jenny McCarthy. Personal collection of Holly Madison / Via HarperCollins

Eventually, Hefner forced her to quit her job at Hooters. “It was just a dumb waitressing job, but after I was pressured to give that job up, I really felt cut off from the outside world,” Madison said. “And cut off from any independence I had.” At the time, she had no earning potential; Hefner had made the decision to stop putting his girlfriends in the magazine, because usually once they achieved that, they would leave him.

The Girls Next Door came along in 2005, and that was when — finally — things began to improve.

From left: Marquardt, Playmate Liz Stewart, Madison, and Kendra Wilkinson. Personal collection of Holly Madison / Via HarperCollins

The E! reality show didn’t immediately solve Madison’s problems; in fact, she writes that the women weren’t paid a dime for Season 1. But Hefner’s group of girlfriends had been reduced to three, and she, Marquardt, and Wilkinson got along. (That is, they got along then: Wilkinson has since decided to feud with Madison publicly, some of which is detailed in the book.)

“I was sad at times after Girls Next Door, too, but I felt like the TV show improved our experience a lot.”

The girls got to travel and also earn money for the season. 

But after five seasons and more time with Hefner, Marquardt and Wilkinson were moving on and moving out, giving Madison what her Girls Next Door persona was scripted as wanting: a solo relationship with Hefner. It turned out to be an idea she couldn’t bear, and she finally decided to leave.

“During the end, I definitely recognized that he was verbally abusive, and that was what made me snap,” Madison said. “There were so many things in the relationship I wasn’t fully comfortable with, but I was able to justify them in my mind because there were other advantages to being there. And when Bridget and Kendra were getting ready to leave, and it seemed like I was finally going to be the only one, he went off on me three times in one weekend — two of those anecdotes I detail in the book. I was like, holy crap, I just can’t be here anymore if this dude’s just going to be a jerk.”

After leaving she was nervous about work life but soon ended up on Dancing With the Stars and in Peepshow, for which she made, she writes, millions of dollars. She performed as its lead until she was too pregnant to continue — she had begun dating Pasquale Rotella, an EDM magnate, in 2011. Their daughter, Rainbow, was born in March 2013.

Hefner, who is 89 at this point, has not given an interview about Madison’s book. When he was contacted, a spokesperson reiterated the statement Hefner previously released. It reads: “Over the course of my life I’ve had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women. Many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives and I’m pleased to say remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight. I guess, as the old saying goes: You can’t win ‘em all!”

In response, Madison told BuzzFeed News, “I think my favorite thing about that response is he takes the opportunity to remind everyone how many women he’s dated.”

She said: “Hef loves to surround himself with ‘yes’ people. And he does have a lot of friends that he’s good to. There’s such a culture up there of everybody always talking about him being the nicest guy. You know, that was the veneer and the personality that I fell for for so long. So you are kind of afraid to speak out in a way because you’re made to feel like you’re crazy.”

The book ends with Madison happily married to Rotella. “He’s my Prince Charming, but I didn’t need saving,” she writes. “I saved myself.”

Denise Truscello

“I call myself a born-again feminist,” she said. “I can’t call myself a feminist, or people are going to attack me for that, like, How can you be a feminist, you lived with Hugh Hefner! But I feel like there comes a time in every woman’s life when you have to become a feminist.”

Madison paused, and said, “You can play dumb as long as you want. It’s not going to last, and it’s not going to be fulfilling.”

Fletch, Vaughan & Megan are talking to Holly Madison on Monday 6th July. 

Source: Buzzfeed