May 9, 2026, 2:24 p.m. ET
“Girls Next Door” alum Holly Madison is rehashing what life at the Playboy Mansion was like before and after the reality show began filming.
Hugh Hefner‘s former girlfriend and star of the former E! reality series spoke about life at Hefner’s residence on a May 5 episode of the “Let’s Be Honest” podcast. She said the filming for “Girls Next Door” changed a “weird scene” involving group sex and nights out at strip clubs.
“It was a really weird scene. Nobody liked it and everybody just tried to get it done as fast as possible,” she told podcast host Kristin Cavallari. In the 2022 A&E docuseries “Secrets of Playboy,” Madison described some experiences in the mansion as traumatic and cult-like.
The pattern changed once filming for “Girls Next Door” began, Madison said. The reality series, which aired for six seasons from 2005 to 2010, followed the lives of Madison and her fellow playmates Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt inside the Playboy Mansion.
“Not that we wouldn’t ever go out, if it was like a special occasion, but we stopped those regular club nights, where we’re going out every Wednesday and Friday, because we were so busy with the show,” she said.
On the podcast, Madison said the show gave Hefner relevance and an ego boost and said he didn’t feel the need to go on “compulsive sex nights.”
USA TODAY has reached out to Playboy Enterprises for comment.
Holly Madison previously described life in the mansion as a ‘cult’
Madison left the mansion and her relationship with Hefner in 2008 after seven years together. The Playboy magazine founder died at age 91 in 2017 from cardiac arrest.
In the 2022 A&E docuseries “Secrets of Playboy,” Madison describes living in the mansion as a cult and describes her first time having sex with Hefner as traumatic. While she thought she was in love with him at the time, looking back, she said, “It was very Stockholm syndrome.”
Soon after the docuseries dropped, Hefner’s son and Hefner Capital founder Cooper, 34, took to X to defend his father, writing “Some may not approve of the life my Dad chose, but my father was not a liar.”
“However unconventional, he was sincere in his approach and lived honestly. He was generous in nature and cared deeply for people. These salacious stories are a case study of regret becoming revenge,” he wrote.
That same month, the magazine posted a statement: “Today’s Playboy is not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy.”
“We trust and validate these women and their stories and we strongly support those individuals who have come forward to share their experiences,” the statement read. “We also recognize that these allegations are difficult to hear and that sexual violence affects victims everywhere.”
Contributing: Alia E. Dastagir, USA TODAY
