The Dark Reality Behind ‘The Girls Next Door,’ According to Holly Madison
· Vice
The Girls Next Door—a reality series about Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends living in the Playboy Mansion—was one of the most iconic pop culture moments to come out of the early 2000s. The girls appeared to be living the life, helping host events at the mansion, going out in Los Angeles with Hefner, and having the mansion staff at their disposal. However, beneath the glitz and glamor lay a very different reality for Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson.
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Madison has been the most outspoken of her time with Hefner and living at the mansion, and from her accounts, there’s little to be desired. Madison resided in the mansion from 2001 until 2008, during which her depression reached its peak. The Playboy mogul had strict rules for his girlfriends, resulting in their having zero social lives outside the mansion in the early days. She held on to her hosting job at Hooters to maintain a connection with the outside world and have extra money for as long as she could.
Madison’s struggle with depression
In her book, Down the Rabbit Hole, Madison recounts wanting to end her life a year into her life at the mansion. “Drowning myself seemed like a logical way to escape the ridiculous life I was leading,” she wrote. “I just couldn’t take my misery anymore.” Madison tried to do everything right by seeking help, but Hefner put a stop to it. Instead of seeking help from a therapist, she was prescribed antidepressants from a doctor.
Soon, Hefner made her quit her job at Hooters. The only connections and people she’d be able to confide in were mansion staff like Mary O’Connor—Hefner’s longtime secretary—and the other girlfriends. While she didn’t feel comfortable going into detail with O’Connor about her internal struggles for fear of Hefner finding out, she grew much closer to Marquardt.
how the girls next door changed Madison’s life
In 2005, E! came knocking, giving the girls a unique opportunity to show their lives in the mansion with The Girls Next Door. Ironically, this opportunity gave Madison more flexibility. Although they weren’t paid a dime for Season 1, they were paid for every season thereafter. They were also able to travel and do Playboy shoots as official Playmates (something Hefner forbade them from doing). “I was sad at times after Girls Next Door, too, but I felt like the TV show improved our experience a lot,” Madison told Buzzfeed News in 2015.
As the show was coming to an end and Marquardt and Wilkinson were preparing to set out on their own ventures, it would leave Madison alone in the mansion with Hefner. While her longtime storyline on the show was that she wanted to be his only girlfriend, by the end, she knew it was her chance to leave.
“During the end, I definitely recognized that he was verbally abusive, and that was what made me snap,” Madison told Buzzfeed News. “There were so many things in the relationship I wasn’t fully comfortable with, but I was able to justify them in my mind because there were other advantages to being there. And when Bridget and Kendra were getting ready to leave, and it seemed like I was finally going to be the only one, he went off on me three times in one weekend — two of those anecdotes I detail in the book. I was like, holy crap, I just can’t be here anymore if this dude’s just going to be a jerk.”
Life after the playboy mansion and the girls next door
Naturally, she was unsure about her decision to leave at first. What would life be like? Would she be able to find work again? To love again? Madison found it all and more.
From 2009 until 2011, she had her own show on E!, Holly’s World, which followed her throughout her Las Vegas journey to star in Peepshow. The success of the show continued long after she left the mansion. According to Madison, she made millions of dollars from the venture. In 2011, she began dating Pasquale Rotella. They welcomed their daughter Rainbow in March 2013 and son Forest in August 2016. They have since separated but are active co-parents.
Now, Madison hosts a podcast about her time on The Girls Next Door with Marquardt. In 2023, she signed on to host ID’s The Playboy Murders, a series that uncovers the dark history of Playboy. She also hosts Lethally Blonde, which premiered its second season on ID in June.
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