Holly Madison, who was Hugh Hefner’s No. 1 girlfriend for years, spilled intimate details about what really went down behind the bedroom doors of the Playboy Mansion.
The 46-year-old appeared on a May 5 episode of the Let’s Be Honest With Kristin Cavallari podcast and revealed how she tried to leave the “cult-like” environment on multiple occasions, but the Playboy patriarch would manipulate her if she dared to leave.
Highlights
- Holly Madison was Hugh Hefner’s “number one girl” for seven years.
- The former Playboy Bunny spilled intimate details about what really went down behind the bedroom doors of the Playboy Mansion.
- She also revealed how Hefner would manipulate her into staying and had a strange way of using his will to keep her in the mansion.
Holly Madison spilled intimate details about what really went down behind the bedroom doors of the Playboy Mansion
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Holly Madison, who grew up in Alaska and Oregon, took up a job at Hooters in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 20, which ultimately led her to the Playboy Mansion.
When she became the No. 1 girlfriend of the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, she was required to be intimate with Hugh Hefner alongside a group of girls.
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It was “kind of like taking turns, and then the girls who weren’t (s*xu*lly) active with him were pretending to be or acting like they were active with the other girls but not really…” she told podcast host Kristin Cavallari.
“It was kind of silhouetted…cause there were like giant screens of p*rn going,” she continued.
Calling it a “really weird scene,” she said, “nobody liked it, and everybody just tried to get it done as fast as possible.”
The former Playboy Bunny, who was Hefner’s “number one girl” for seven years, had to take turns with other girls and be intimate with him
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When Cavallari asked whether she had to go “first or last” since she was the “main girlfriend,” Madison said there wasn’t really an order.
“It was kind of the same every night,” she said. “But kind of not.”
Even though she was the “main girlfriend,” it was very rare for her to sleep with him on her own, she added.
“It was just us watching a movie or him doing a crossword puzzle,” she said about the seven years she spent as the “number one girl.”
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Madison claimed Hefner would create a “super competitive” environment in the mansion, where the girls would have to “play two different teams against each other.”
This way, he “always felt fought over, and he could always get his way, and we couldn’t unionize against him,” she said.
“I didn’t realize that was going on,” she continued. “I thought he was so great, and I thought it was just the girls being awful…but also coming from myself and just the fear and pressures I had.”
“Because I was just this random girl from Oregon who felt like, okay, I made this decision.”
Hefner created a “super competitive” environment among the girls so he could “always [feel] fought over”
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The former Playboy Bunny said there were times when she tried to leave the manion, but he wouldn’t take her “seriously.”
She claimed he would dangle his will in front of her and “kept trying to get [her] back.”
“He would leave his will out on the bed on my side so I could see how much money was going to be left for me if I stayed,” she said.
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Madison recalled how, at the time, it was a “big trend” for “tabloidy outlets” to publish reports about her and the other women in the mansion.
They would “write like, ‘Oh, these girls just aren’t going to be famous anymore,’” she said. “So Hef would get all this stuff printed out and leave it out so I would see, hoping I would change my mind, like, oh my god, I can’t be irrelevant. I must stay.”
The Playboy patriarch would manipulate Madison into staying and had a strange way of using his will to keep her in the mansion
Image credits: Let's Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari
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Elsewhere in the interview, Madison spoke about the reality TV hit series The Girls Next Door, in which she appeared alongside fellow girlfriends Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.
Madison said there was much more to life in the mansion than the silk robes, champagne, and plush lifestyles that viewers saw.
They “definitely manipulated storylines” for the series, which ran from 2005 to 2010.
“It was definitely trying to clean the whole thing up and present it as like, oh, here’s this cute little grandpa and these three girls and maybe they’re doing stuff, maybe not,” she said. “You can decide for yourself, but it’s all very happy and sparkly and perfect.”
Image credits: Denise Truscello/Getty Images
Playboy’s once-golden girl said the show was “definitely not real” and claimed they would fabricate certain narratives.
“They were always cutting to me rolling my eyes when I wasn’t and making it look like I was super jealous of all these people I wasn’t,” she said.
Meanwhile, Hefner “loved the show” so much he “got high off” it, Madison said.
“It gave him new relevance like an ego boost, so he didn't really feel the need to do these compulsive s*x nights to make himself feel wanted,” she said.
“There was no discussion to stop the nights,” she added. “It just evolved and we just didn't want to do it anymore.”
Today, Madison is a mother to two children, who are “very sheltered” from her past life
Today, Madison is a mother to two children, Forest and Rainbow, whom she shares with ex-husband Pasquale Rotella.
She said in a previous interview that her kids were “very sheltered” from her past life and don’t know anything about the mansion.
“Their dad hates all that stuff, so he doesn't talk about it, but also kids that age have no idea what that is,” she said on the In Your Dreams Podcast in May 2025.
She said she wasn’t quite sure about how she would eventually tell them, saying, “You never know with kids how you're going to explain anything until it comes up.”
“To cut a long story short: Hefner was Epstein, before Epstein,” one commented online, while another snarked, “Don’t act like a victim”
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