The Girls Next Door’s Holly Madison Reflects on Time With Hugh Hefner: He Wasn’t a ‘Kindly Grandpa’

The madness behind the camera. Holly Madison, among other ex-girlfriends of Hugh Hefner, opened up about her time living in the Playboy Mansion with the media mogul in the new A&E documentary series titled “Secrets of Playboy.”

“At the mansion, the indoctrination, I feel, starts almost immediately when you’re there, and you start hearing about how wonderful Hef is from his circle of friends,” Holly, 42, said in the first episode aired on January 24. “So, in the beginning, Hef is what you would now call a love bomber. He’s somebody who tells you ‘I love you’ almost immediately.”

The Vegas Diaries author dated the late Playboy magazine founder from 2001 to 2008, when she lived in the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. Since coming out with her tell-all memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, the Holly’s World alum has been outspoken about her experiences with Hugh, who died in 2017 at the age of 91.

“I feel like on The Girls Next Door, Hef was portrayed as, like, a kindly grandpa, but that’s not how he is,” Holly explained. “It would make me so angry how manipulative he was. Hef controlled every aspect of our life.”

In the series, the reality star also references an incident when the TV personality allegedly “flipped out” on her because she cut her hair shorter than he liked. “He was very unhappy about it,” Jonathon Baker, a friend of Hugh’s, recalled during the episode.

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After leaving The Girls Next Door, the New York Times best-selling author starred in her own hit reality TV show, Holly’s World. The show aired on E! for two seasons from 2009 to 2011. The series detailed Holly’s journey leaving L.A. for Las Vegas to star in a Vegas show called Peepshow. The show also entailed Holly spending time with a new group of friends that included her personal assistant, a former Broadway performer, and Holly’s wild roommate who loved to party. 

Holly was previously married to TV producer Pasquale Rotella from 2013 to 2019. The exes share two children together, daughter Rainbow and son Forest.

Secrets of Playboy airs Mondays on A&E at 9 p.m. ET.