There was one more piece that made a lasting impression on me. After donning a strapless cream-colored cocktail dress and gorgeous amber necklace from Marilyn’s personal collection, I was handed a kimono wrap to complete the look. There was no mistaking the frilly, violet and pink Edwardian-style confection. It was a piece Marilyn wore in The Prince and the Showgirl—the same kimono wrap depicted in my beloved Marilyn Monroe paper doll set all those years earlier.
Twirling around in front of the mirror like a little girl, I understood what Cinderella must have felt like when her Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand and produced the most perfect ball gown. I was in absolute awe—it was surreal to imagine that she had worn these very same pieces, decades before me, and how, as a little girl, I shut my eyes and dreamed about what it would feel like to be her for just a moment.
And now I knew. Like me, Marilyn had suffered at the hands of some not very nice men. She was used, unappreciated, and struggled to find herself. She worked her way up in Hollywood with stars in her eyes and a kind heart, but found that Hollywood wasn’t always as kind in return. She may have been publically adored, idolized, and lusted after, but she often felt alone and trapped. Those dark demons eventually got the best of Marilyn. Part of me knows that could have easily been my fate had I not chosen to take care of myself. I only wish poor Marilyn could have done the same.
CHAPTER 15
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.”
—Alice in Wonderland
Despite what one might think, creating a world for myself and by myself, independent of Playboy, wasn’t all that easy.
“Why don’t you go somewhere else—like Miami?” suggested Brenda, one of my favorite E! executives. A few weeks after I had returned to Los Angeles, after my breakup with Criss, I took a lunch meeting at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills with a few people from E! to discuss ideas for a possible Girls Next Door spin-off.
“I don’t want to go to Miami,” I explained. “There’s no reason to. I don’t have anything to do in Florida. It just doesn’t feel organic.”
“What about . . .” Brenda began. She tapped her fork against her plate, trying to drum up some additional non-Vegas ideas. “Chicago!” she finally exclaimed. “You could try to take over Playboy!” she teased.
I smiled at her exuberance. As farfetched as it sounded, I knew Brenda believed we could make a good show out of something so preposterous. She was one of my biggest champions for my photo editor storyline on GND and really hoped to see season six follow the action at Studio West. I needed to let her know that I was going to completely sever ties with the magazine, before the conversation went any further.
“I really want to separate myself from Playboy and do my own thing,” I said, before revealing to them my grand plan. “I’m going to go to Las Vegas and do a live show.”
They all stared at me with blank expressions, trying with great care to make sure their faces weren’t betraying them. When we sat down for this lunch, I hadn’t yet landed Peepshow. But it wasn’t hard to read their minds: Holly doesn’t have any stage talent—what was she possibly going to do?
Okay, so it’s not like I had put my best foot forward for the meeting. Still in the midst of my Dancing with the Stars run, I didn’t have time to shower before, let alone do laundry. I arrived at the swanky Four Seasons hotel dressed in old jeans, Converse high-tops, and a bulky Criss Angel logo emblazoned skull hoodie (not out of sentimentality, mind you; it’s what was clean).
“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Brenda offered, after what felt like a 10-minute pause. “We just have a hard time with Vegas.”
I gave her a puzzled look.
“Every season we get a Vegas pilot,” she explained, her expression turning more earnest. “I’m serious, every season—and it never works.”
E! had gambled on Vegas before and lost. I could tell the network wasn’t quite ready to jump back in bed with Sin City, but I wasn’t willing to alter my vision. After spending most of my adult life playing by someone else’s rules, I was finally determined to follow my heart.
Shortly after my lunch meeting with the E! execs, I announced my three-month residency with Peepshow. Nonbelievers be damned! When GND producers reached out to schedule a date for me to do a cameo in the new season, I was hesitant. I knew they felt that if Bridget, Kendra, and I did these cameos, it would help loyal viewers make the transition and warm up to the new girls. I eventually agreed to have them bring Hef and his new girlfriends to see me in my new revue. I hated the idea of associating Playboy with Peepshow—and so quickly into my tenure—but the free advertising for Peepshow was just too good to pass up.
The transition into the new season wouldn’t be easy. To their credit, the producers wanted to populate the cast of season six with several Playmates in addition to the new girlfriends. They knew that fans of the show wouldn’t necessarily warm up to three random girls being plopped into our places and thought it would be nice to have a few extra characters in the mix. Hef, however, insisted that Crystal, Karissa, and Kristina be the focus of the series, as the new Girls Next Door, despite objections that Hef’s relationship with the twins “reeked of incest.”
Hef was still convinced that the show would remain popular no matter whom he chose to date. In his mind, the girls’ personalities didn’t matter and certainly didn’t contribute to the show’s success. It was all about him, after all.
I didn’t catch much of season six—not out of spite, mind you. With Peepshow’s six-nights-a-week schedule, I didn’t have time for TV. However, I did make a point of watching the episode I ended up appearing in and noticed that Crystal didn’t pass up any opportunities to take a few unnecessary jabs at me.
“I like Bridget and Kendra, but Holly . . . I don’t know,” one of Crystal’s friends whined in a high-pitched, whimpery voice.
Crystal giggled and said, “Every time I try talking to her, she’s like, woo hoo, out to space.”
Keep in mind that at that point I had met Crystal only once (at Hef’s Vegas birthday pool party). She made no attempt to actually speak with me, beyond her snotty response to my introduction, but I guess she thought making up lies was an okay thing to do on camera. After all, she was the mansion’s head mistress and the star of GND now, so surely no one would question her.
Producers asked if I would be available to shoot a scene with the Shannon twins during the day and I agreed. Hef suggested the activity: taking the girls to see his wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s at the Venetian.
Crystal and Hef arrived later at the Palms in Las Vegas to meet the twins, who were doing an autograph signing. Hef greeted them at the table where the signing was set up while Crystal hung back behind the velvet ropes. As the press cameras started flashing, Crystal bolted around the barricade to participate in the hug fest.
“They kind of look like them,” Crystal sneered as she walked past the hotel’s Playboy retail boutique and spied the Holly, Bridget, and Kendra bobbleheads in the window.
Before Peepshow, I was asked to join Hef, Crystal, and the twins in their suite for a family-style buffet dinner. Hef and I hadn’t spoken much since our breakup, so seeing him for the first time on camera was a bit uncomfortable. As he went in for an embrace, I clearly opted for the ass-out “bro hug” and tried to avoid his kiss. When he offered to feed each girlfriend a bite of his ice cream sundae, he turned to offer me a spoonful, which I quickly refused, saying, “Oh, I ordered my own.”
The Girls Next Door had planned on having us bring Hef up on the stage for our audience participation bit in Peepshow, and the crowd went wild. I played into it as much as I needed to, but was eager to go on with the show.
“It seemed like that night, Hef was definitely the main attraction,” Crystal quipped, in a voice overlay.
I knew what it felt like, as Hef’s girlfriend, to be compared to his former flames and feel undervalued or underappreciated, but there was no reason for Crystal to take that out on me with all her s
nide remarks.
When producers summoned Bridget, Kendra, and me to reunite for a GND episode featuring Kendra’s baby shower, we all agreed without hesitation. Not only were we all grateful for the good things that came from the show and from Hef; we were, at that point, still very supportive of one another. While we had moved on to different places in our lives, we still kept in touch and deep down, there was an undeniable bond that we shared.
Mary O’Connor was gracious enough to host the bash in her backyard and Bridget did a wonderful job of putting the soiree together. It was a perfect little gathering on a beautiful summer’s day—until Hef and his girlfriends showed up.
The ordeal that ensued was reported by gossip blogger Perez Hilton:
Sources tell PerezHilton.com exclusively that there was some major drama at Kendra Wilkinson’s baby shower yesterday. We reported earlier that not only were Kendra’s BFFs Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt in attendance but also Hef and his newest girlfriends, Crystal Harris and the Shannon twins.
Apparently, the twins and Crystal put up a major stink about having to be at the party and refused to participate in any of the games by hiding in the house.
According to our source, the girls were exceedingly rude to everyone, especially Holly, Bridget, and Kendra, which just made the whole day awkward.
And because the episode was being filmed for Girls Next Door and not Kendra, Hef had to have his new ladies included in the footage, so he had them fake a scene “where it looked like Kendra was opening her last present when she hadn’t even started opening presents, just so they could leave.” Once they were gone, we’re told the vibe mellowed out and everyone had a wonderful time.
Uh-Oh. The new gals aren’t fans of the veterans, we see. Perhaps there’s some jealousy that Hef America really likes Holly, Bridget, and Kendra more than these three infants?
Occasionally, when I was on my computer, I’d have the TV on in the background. Once I caught a commercial for the new season of The Girls Next Door.
“I’m not the new Holly . . . she’s the old me,” Crystal snapped sassily in the season’s first promotional trailer.
Ouch, I thought when I first heard it. Honestly, I didn’t even blame Crystal for the snide remark. I’d been in that same interview chair for five long seasons before she even came along and I assume the producers fed her that line. Crystal just didn’t come off as comfortable or clever enough to think up even a lame zinger like that. In fact, most of her dialogue on the show was painfully awkward at best.
I was terribly disappointed in the producers. For four years, I had (literally!) bared my life for that show, but as soon as I left, they were taking potshots at me. There is no doubt in my mind that, had the new cast succeeded and the show remained on the air, they would still be bagging on me to this day if it was good for ratings.
From the reports I read and the little I did see, season six felt like a stale rehash of old storylines mixed with some of the ideas we had tossed around but had not gotten around to using over the years (like “camping in the backyard”). And when promos began airing, I couldn’t help but see my name popping up on websites and blogs because of some hurtful jab being made at my expense. It felt like they were trying to encourage a war between the old and new guard. Or perhaps they felt that by throwing our names around as often as possible they could distract viewers and keep them from realizing what a snore-fest the once energetic and bubbly series had become.
When asked in an interview what I thought of the new season, I was honest. Maybe I should have just said that I hadn’t seen any of it, but the constant jabs had begun gnawing at me—after all, I’m only human.
“The girls need to focus on what makes them unique and not doing the same things Bridget, Kendra, and I have already done on the show,” I said candidly. “I don’t want to look behind, I want to look forward.”
A week letter I received a letter from Hef reprimanding me for my remarks. Hef loved to send letters. Prior to sending one, he’d usually make a copy and place it neatly in one of his countless scrapbooks. I don’t think he writes the letters with the purpose of getting a response or closure (which is why I never bothered to respond), I think he does it so he can have the last word in even the tiniest event in the story of his life. It’s Hef’s version of reality, all the time.
When I filmed a guest spot on Kendra’s self-titled spin-off, my former housemate confessed to me (off camera) that she got disapproving letters from Hef fairly regularly as well. She told me she was forced to apologize for a quote she gave the media referring to the “whores up there” at the mansion, which Hef assumed referred to the Shannon twins.
I would end up receiving many “reprimand” letters from Hef—it seemed nothing I said in the press met his approval. The whole thing felt sort of creepy—as if he thought he was my dad or something and had some sort of jurisdiction over me. Eventually, when I would see letters from the mansion in my mail, I would throw them away without even opening them. They just creeped me out and brought forth negative feelings. I didn’t want him to have that sort of power over me.
Meanwhile, I was taking Las Vegas by storm. Peepshow had quickly become the Vegas Strip’s new smash hit. Ticket sales skyrocketed, prompting producers to sign me on through the end of the year! I couldn’t believe it! I knew how hard I had worked trying to make the show and my performance as successful as possible—and it actually paid off!
Speaking of paying off, I was finally doing well financially. Actually . . . very well. I signed a multimillion-dollar contract with Peepshow (and even my breasts were insured with Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars—not bad for a $7,000 investment!). People assumed I had been rich beyond my wildest dreams at the mansion and that I must be struggling to get by in my post-Playboy life . . . but, in reality, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I was carving out a pretty unique niche for myself, and the quirkiness of my new showgirl life was becoming hard to ignore. I had been called “one of the most in-demand and beloved celebrities in Las Vegas” by the Los Angeles Times. Performing full time in a live show made me different from all the other talent on E! Most reality-show starlets on TV at that time were L.A. girls with a passion for fashion, so being a new kind of Vegas showgirl at least set me apart from all the others. In the summer of 2009, I began seriously discussing a spin-off with E! I was determined to make Vegas work. Luckily, Brenda gave the idea another chance and we started exploring themes for a potential series.
Season six of The Girls Next Door was a total disaster. After viewers saw what they were getting on the season premiere, most never tuned back in. The new girlfriends pulled only about half the ratings we did in previous seasons. When the new season ended in August, E! pulled the plug on what had been, less than a year earlier, their number one series. In an effort to recapture some of the GND loyalists—who were tuning in by droves to Kendra—the network green-lit production for a pilot that would serve as an “E! special” that December called Holly’s World.
My initial vision for the show was Legally Blonde meets a PG-rated version of Showgirls. Peepshow wasn’t enough for me. I wanted my day job to be interning at the mayor’s office, learning how to run the city. My pilot centered on a silly plot: me visiting the mayor’s office with a complaint about roadwork, resulting in my friends and me going on several misadventures trying to collect signatures for a petition. It was a roundabout way of introducing the people in my life, what I wanted to do, and taking a tour of some unlikely spots and meeting some strange people in the city.
I didn’t necessarily assume that my pilot would rate that well. I wasn’t an energetic, ditsy, made-for-reality-TV blonde like Kendra. I was quiet and reserved and much preferred reading a book to shaking my ass. While I knew my lifestyle was unique, would anyone really care? When I received word that the special had not only done well, but that E! wanted to order an entire season, my jaw hit the floor! Of course that was what I had hoped for, but I certainly hadn�
��t expected it!
It was official: Holly’s World was a go. In my head, I thought it was going to be my version of The Mary Tyler Moore Show—girl moves to a new city post breakup in order to make it on her own. With shooting to begin in early 2010, our first order of business was to lock down the cast. The three friends I had chosen to appear in my pilot were asked back for the full season: Angel Porrino (my bestie and new assistant), Josh Strickland (my charismatic Peepshow costar), and Laura Croft (my crazy roommate) rounded out the crew.
Anxious to begin this Playboy-free chapter of my life, I was eager to sort out contract negotiations as quickly as possible and begin filming. However, like a bad dream, my past continued to haunt me and the contracts we had to sign while at the mansion carried over onto my new spin-off with E!. It was a lot of baggage to move forward with, but I was in a hurry to get going. And, conditioned by all those years at the mansion, I still wasn’t strong enough to hold my ground for long. I had grown a lot in the last year and a half, but I still had a long way to go.
At the start of 2010, cameras began following our wild lives in Sin City as sexy singles looking to balance our wild Vegas social calendars with performances six nights a week—and like all reality shows, it wasn’t without its fair share of drama.
I was pressured heavily by production to put my dating life on camera and I stubbornly refused. I agreed to film a “blind date” episode, but anyone I dated in real life was strictly off-limits at this point. I was sick of being thought of as “Hugh Hefner’s ex,” and the way I felt like Criss used me for publicity had left a bad taste in my mouth, so I was determined to stand on my own and not publicize my love life. If I was even asked about a rumored romance on camera, I denied it. This resulted in more than one argument between production and me, but I refused to give in.
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Page 30