Photo:Denise Truscello
Denise Truscello
In the nearly 15 years sinceHolly Madisonleft the Playboy Mansion, she’s become aNew York Timesbestselling author, a mother of two and the host of theGirls Next Levelpodcast with her friend Bridget Marquardt.
But Madison spent some of her most-formative years in a relationship withHugh Hefner, trapped in what she’s described as aPlayboy false paradise.
Hugh Hefner.Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times/Getty
Before his death, Madison had also gone public with the trauma she faced after dating Hefner in her bookDown the Rabbit Hole.
“I’d already come out talking about what a toxic relationship this was for me,” she says. “Why am I supposed to post a memorial on my Instagram?”
Still healing from her years in the Playboy Mansion at the time, Madison — who says she developed body dysmorphia due to Hefner’s constant judgment — felt a range of emotions when he died.
“Not relief at all, because I felt like I had taken myself kind of out of that universe pretty solidly. But it was a really odd time,” she recalls. “For me, after leaving that relationship, I kind of felt like he had always interacted with me in such a fake way. Because every interaction he had with me was all about control or this fantasy he had of a relationship. It almost felt like playing house in a way.”
Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner.J. Merritt/FilmMagic
Even after Madison left the mansion and the relationship, she was still working at E!, the same network who had produced her showGirls Next Door.
Hugh Hefner and Holly Madison.Laurence Cottrell/FilmMagic
“Why would I want to talk to a robot? Everything he says to me is just going to be designed to get a certain reaction, designed to keep me on his good side. It just didn’t feel authentic,” she says. “Before he passed away, there had been maybe five or six years where I just had not spoken to him at all. He had become a completely different character in my mind.”
Sharing her side of the story wasn’t easy for Madison:her book was met with a wave of backlash, and there are still people who are “snarky” with her today, she says.
“There’s still people who want to attack me for telling my truth, even if it has nothing to do with them. Just because when you’re coming from the mansion, it’s kind of this high-stakes environment where people attach who they are to this title of being a playmate or being associated with Playboy, sothey don’t ever want to hear a bad word about it,” she says.
“And it just gets really catty even now with some people, but those people aren’t in my life, so it’s okay.”
Holly Madison.Denise Truscello
Thanks to herGirls Next Levelpodcast and her co-host and longtime friend Marquardt, Madison says she’s been able to “reclaim some of the good times” from her 20s as well.
“[When] Bridget and I became friends, we decided we really wanted to flip the script. So I started meeting all the new Playmate candidates at the door when they showed up and giving them a tour, and that really changed the vibe," she says. “We made a lot of friends with a lot of people, a lot of playmates, and it just completely changed the atmosphere.”
source: people.com
