Down the Rabbit Hole

by Holly Madison

  I added some levity to the show. Despite being delusional about my relationship with Hef, I recognized many of the absurdities of mansion life, and audiences seemed to gravitate towards that. I could roll my eyes along with those men and women sitting on their couch when Hef insisted on us all embracing in a cheesy group hug or laugh along with them at one of Kendra’s dumb blonde moments—and actually be in on the joke, instead of its punch line. Sure, it could be construed as bitchy, but it seemed to strike the right counterbalance. Plus, there was only so much I could handle. While I loved shooting, deep down, I still hated that this was how I had become famous.

  Like a busty version of the Three Musketeers, we complemented each other’s personalities well on camera. The initial appeal of Playboy was obvious, but what was unexpected was the audience fascination with the three of us. People came to the show for an inside look at Hugh Hefner’s magical world, but they stayed because of Kendra, Bridget, and me. I honestly believe the show wouldn’t have worked as well with any other cast of characters that had lived in the mansion. If cameras started rolling a year earlier when the Mean Girls still haunted the hallways, I don’t think any production team could have made those women even the least bit likable.

  Towards the end of season one, upwards of 1.5 million people were tuning in each Sunday night to see what was happening with the three quirky blondes on Charing Cross Road—major numbers for the network.

  However, despite the show’s immense popularity, we weren’t able to celebrate many of the positive perks of our newfound celebrity. As usual, we remained locked behind the mansion gates, bound to our dictator’s rules. We weren’t well known enough yet to be recognized while simply running errands (usually in Juicy sweats and without makeup)—especially without one another or Hef. The club nights had slowed to a halt and we weren’t permitted to do any of our own press, so any fan-demonium we experienced still seemed to revolve around Playboy and Hef. I never knew we girls had fans of our own until later into the series.

  But thanks to the Internet, we were able to absorb the full scope of the criticism that spewed from countless online haters.

  In 2005, Myspace was still the most important social media site available, and was used primarily on personal computers (who had a smartphone back then?). These were the calm days before Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter became national obsessions. The term “cyber bullying” hadn’t even yet been coined. While today most people are aware of the dangers of the anonymous taunting on social media (and many have been victims themselves), reading truly cruel remarks about yourself online from complete strangers was a form of self-torture that I wasn’t quite prepared to deal with.

  My self-confidence was already fragile, so I took the vicious online attacks far more personally than I should have. Gold diggers, whores, sluts, stupid . . . we were called everything I had always feared I would be called for being a part of this group. When I would stumble upon a message board discussing The Girls Next Door, not only did I feel hated but also completely isolated. Even though Kendra and Bridget received equally as brutal commentary from these miserable trolls hiding behind their computers, there’s something very lonely about being a battering ram for a group of hateful people. And absolutely nothing was sacred. Even those physical qualities I did feel secure with were subject to public ridicule (I love my big eyes, but ruthless haters labeled them “reptilian”).

  I was hyperaware of the public perception of Hef’s harem of blondes, so part of me was convinced that Kendra, Bridget, and I were a total laughingstock. While promoting the show in New York, we were invited to be guests on the ABC daytime talk show The View. A producer placed Hef on a chair and strategically organized the three of us to perch around him. It was uncomfortable and awkward, but we were new to the game and wanted to be amenable. As soon as the cameras started rolling, Barbara Walters asked the three of us, “Do you always sit like this?” As if it had been our inane idea. In case I had somehow managed to drift off into blissful ignorance, Barbara Walters was there to remind us of how ridiculous we all appeared—and what a joke we were. Bridget and I wanted to crawl inside our own bodies and die. But Kendra . . . she just responded in an episode of GND that the hosts were all “haters” who needed boob jobs.

  JUST A FEW MONTHS after the final episode of our first season aired, E! renewed GND for a second season. The premier of the second season would end up scoring a three-year ratings high for the network. In a way, I got what I had wished for. The fame for fame’s sake I had grown to desire was now mine. It didn’t make me happy, though. It was the emptiest kind of fame, not gained by producing quality work, but by being a curiosity: one of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends.

  During the filming of season one, a Playmate named Kara Monaco had come to live across the street from the mansion at the Bunny House. Kara and I had become close friends over the year and she even made quite a few cameos throughout the first season of the show. When 2006 rolled in, Kara was bestowed the highest honor a Playmate can receive: “Playmate of the Year.” She was on the cover of the June 2006 issue and featured in a gorgeous Cinderella-themed pictorial. Of course I was beyond happy for my friend, but I was also melancholy. Not only was a friend moving away, but her success reminded me of the dreams I had had when I moved in five years earlier. As Playmate of the Year, Kara would be graduating from the mansion and traveling the world for appearances and promotions. She was moving on with her life, in the same way I had once hoped to do.

  At 27 years old, I felt positively ancient. It didn’t help that with every batch of Playmate test shoots that trickled through Mary’s office, I’d see memos on certain photos denoting a girl who was deemed “older.” “She’s 28” was always something the Chicago photo editor (a male contemporary of Hef’s) had to point out as if a prospective candidate was at death’s door. After 28, according to them, a girl might as well put herself out to pasture.

  As production crews rolled back in to shoot season two, I reluctantly decided I would do my best to accept my lot in life and aspire to one day be the only girlfriend at the mansion. After all, that is ultimately what I wanted. Wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER 9

  “It’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!

  I do wonder what can have happened to me!”

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  As The Girls Next Door continued on to season two, everything got . . . well, better. Filming occupied most of our days, so our evenings were pretty quiet. With all the attention Hef was receiving from the show, his ego was fully satisfied. He felt both famous and relevant again, and therefore didn’t need to drag us out to nightclubs twice a week so the “adoring public” could ogle him. That was a huge relief for me. Not only was I sick of nightclubbing and drinking, but with the club nights now off the schedule, the post-club bedroom ritual also went out the window. It was definitely an unexpected bonus. It was the first time Hef’s girlfriends could say “we don’t sleep with him” and it would actually be true. Surprisingly, even though sex was out of the equation, Hef seemed happier than ever. I guess there is something Hugh Hefner loves more than sex, and that’s fame.

  Needless to say, for me, sex was never the highlight of the relationship. I was more than happy now that our evenings were spent eating dinner in bed while watching The Sopranos or with Hef fretting over a Sudoku puzzle while I did a crossword. We were like a typical old married couple. The only difference was, only one of us was actually old.

  For a time, the show’s success really bolstered spirits at the mansion. The three of us girls were now getting paid for being on the reality TV hit and could finally start saving up some real money. Playboy, as a brand, was hotter than ever. We were on our way to achieving that long-desired harmony among the girlfriends. GND had become a project we bonded over. Many of the plotlines became memorable common experiences, and the times the episodes would spotlight our individualities made us feel special.

  During season one, we visit
ed Bridget’s hometown, Lodi, California. It was so cool, getting to see her and her family in their “natural habitat,” i.e., outside of the mansion. We visited Kendra’s hometown of San Diego as well. She and her family went out of their way to make us feel at home. Kendra even coordinated a fun tour of her favorite spots and showed us her old home videos. Although, I have to admit, watching Hef fawn over her childhood videos and threatening to take one home made me really uncomfortable. When you’re 80 years old and dating a trio of 20-somethings, you already look like a dirty old man. He didn’t need to give viewers any more ammunition.

  For me, the last episode of season one was really special. We visited the Palms casino in Las Vegas where they were readying the new Playboy Club, set to open the following year. Knowing what a fan I was of the Bunny costume and of Roberto Cavalli (who had designed the new Bunny ensembles for the club), Playboy PR tapped me to model one of the new prototypes in a fashion show (along with several Playmates). Not only was I able to wear this amazing costume, but I was able to do it without the other two girlfriends. It was one of those small instances where I could feel like I was my own person. I savored the moment and it became one of my all-time favorite episodes.

  Less than a year after our first magazine appearance, Hef ordered our second pictorial and cover for the September 2006 issue. The cover would be on stands as season two premiered—and I even got to develop the concept! I sketched the idea out on a cocktail napkin while at a Dodgers game. Taking the notion of “the girl next door” literally, the cover showed the three of us peeking through a white window with frilly drapes—and it became the first time the magazine photographed a corresponding back cover (which, naturally, was a view of our butts as we were peeking out the window). Both images were shot simultaneously to ensure continuity. And while this time we were finally able to star in individually themed shoots, it was mandated that the other two girls appear in the background of each. We still felt frustrated that Hef seemed to think we were only worthwhile as a threesome, but it turned out that casting us as a team wasn’t making us jealous and turning us against each other; instead it was turning us into a team in real life.

  Just like the first shoot, we had a blast modeling together. Being in the magazine was a dream come true for all of us, so being able to do it again was icing on the cake. But just like the first time around, Bridget’s emotions started to get the better of her. She began to feel like the photo editor, Marilyn, was singling her out and nitpicking every detail. If there was a hair out of place, it was Bridget’s. If someone needed to move, it was Bridget. It kept up like this for most of the shoot. Eventually Bridget reached a breaking point and needed to take a moment in the makeup room. Surprisingly, Kendra went in to comfort her and put her in a better mood. I couldn’t have imagined that happening a year earlier, when things had been more strained between the three of us. We had made huge progress with our friendships.

  Other changes were afoot as well. Prior to the show, we’d almost never traveled—Hef was a creature of habit who despised any sort of variation from his routine. Once he finds a comfortable one, he’s bound to stick with it for at least the next few decades. So when we learned that the second season would see us not only on multiple trips to Las Vegas, but also on a two-week-long European getaway, we were flabbergasted. Paris, London, Cannes, Barcelona, Munich, Rome . . . for us, it was unheard of!

  It was on these trips that Bridget and I finally found something we had in common with Kendra: we all loved sightseeing. The three of us were very different, but we all came from working-class backgrounds. I think at one point we each believed that moving into the mansion would give us the opportunity to see the world, but the truth is, we rarely left our neighborhood. After a while, we gave up hope that we would ever travel. Now that Hef knew the world was watching, he had to be the “playboy” everyone believed he was. We were finally getting the experience we thought we had signed up for!

  It was the opportunity of a lifetime, to be able to travel around the world in style, so we didn’t waste a single minute. From Pompeii to the Paris catacombs, Bridget and I were checking things off our bucket lists left and right! Kendra said she felt like she was finally learning about history for the first time, in a way that made it feel real. The three of us were up at the crack of dawn, trying to pack in as many outings as we could before Hef finally rolled out of bed and started his day (usually after noon). He would join us for a few of the landmarks (mostly for filming purposes), but he was more interested in doing press and attending parties in his honor than in seeing the sights.

  The second season rounded out by celebrating my and Hef’s five-year anniversary. Bridget set up a dinner party in the living room, transforming it into a replica of one of my favorite restaurants, The Melting Pot, complete with their signature fondue pots. I couldn’t believe five years had passed since I moved into the mansion—a half decade of my life had been sucked into the Playboy vortex.

  “I think a lot of people would look at being together for five years as a turning point,” I said to the interview camera, an empty smile on my lips. “But I know it’s not a turning point for us because I know nothing is going to change in this relationship any time soon.”

  When we all gathered around the table for our anniversary dinner (because it could never be just the two of us), I presented Hef with the sort of sap-filled greeting card he adored. I’d even scribbled the pet name “Puffin” across the top. As he read it aloud, I burst into tears. Hef put his arm around me and gave me a kiss on the head. He was positively glowing! Not only was he surrounded by a bevy of beauties, the cameras were also there to catch this public display of affection.

  I tried to play off my outburst as having been touched by the romantic moment (and I think most people bought it!), but in reality I was crying because of what a farce this whole thing was and how stretched thin my nerves were at that moment. Hef reading off the flowing words of love from the card reminded me again what a joke this whole situation was and made me feel like I had missed out on my chance to ever have anything real with someone; to ever meet a man who really deserved a card like that. I had sold my soul to the devil and felt that there was no way out.

  As the show continued to grow in popularity, we became more and more valuable to both the network and the brand. We even got to have a tiny bit more say in what kinds of things we filmed.

  “DO YOU LIKE IT?” shouted a network exec, referring to the holiday-themed episode we had just seen a cut of called “There’s Snow Place Like Home.” The mansion was in utter chaos as E! executives, along with a few hundred other of our nearest and dearest, descended onto the grounds to celebrate E!’s upcoming season, which consisted of the season three premiere of GND and the premiere of Ryan Seacrest’s first produced series, Paradise City.

  “Yeah, I think it’s really fun,” I replied, with a big smile as the party buzzed on around us. “People are going to love it!” I had been angling for a Christmas episode since season one, but the producers had always refused. Holidays were a big part of mansion culture and one of the few breaks from the otherwise monotonous life there, so we looked forward to these large-scale events.

  Historically, seasonal episodes hadn’t performed well in reruns, which the network ran a lot of. During those years, you couldn’t turn on E! for more than a few hours before bumping into the three of us, and the execs understandably didn’t want to air a Christmas episode in July.

  Just then, Hef appeared next to me. Seacrest had arrived and network execs and upper management were clamoring for his attention. Earlier that year, Seacrest agreed to a hyper-lucrative megadeal with the network and was quickly christened E!’s resident Golden Boy.

  Hef grumbled under his breath, something about how E! would never have been able to afford Ryan if GND hadn’t been so successful, before shuffling off towards a nearby table, expecting me to follow.

  Hef had become obsessed with the show. When GND was first ordered, he wasn’t particularly eager to
make many appearances.

  “This way, Daddy doesn’t have to do the work!” he guffawed at the press when they would ask him why he decided to do a reality show that centered around his girlfriends. He also described reality shows as “dumb and a waste of time.”

  His tune changed as soon as he realized just how popular the show had become. Suddenly it became imperative that Hef have a substantial scene in every episode. If he saw a rough cut of an episode and wasn’t happy with the amount of screen time he was getting, we were called back to re-film scenes in a manner that would include him more. Even when we shot entire episodes off the mansion grounds, we were obligated to call home on camera, so the show could cut back to what Hef was doing back at the mansion. Not surprisingly, it usually involved him spending time with other women. At the end of the day, the producers were right. It was Hef’s show.

  By the time we began filming on season three, my attitude changed when it came to our little reality program: I was finally fully embracing it. I had been skeptical of how the series would affect my life. But by the time the network ordered a third season, even I had to admit that we had a hit on our hands. I started to see the show as an opportunity. It was an excuse to travel, to go outside the mansion gates and try new things. Also, I was starting to realize that being on a reality show brings a little magic with it. People are more willing to give you a chance when you are on TV, even if it’s on the silliest of reality shows. I was beginning to sense that I might be able to get something bigger out of this, even if that something was confined to the world of Playboy.

  That season, we were finally able to film in December and capture my birthday (Kendra’s and Bridget’s birthdays had both been covered twice over the previous two seasons). Birthday episodes were important to each of us, because it was another opportunity to feel special and to be portrayed as individuals. I think being able to feel like our own person from time to time made us all feel a little less insecure, which allowed us to come together as friends more and more. Even a silly activity like horseback riding helped us bond and, indirectly, ended up having a big influence on my life.