Holly Madison: ‘My hell inside the Playboy mansion’
ONE of Hugh Hefner’s former ‘girlfriends’ has told of drugs, abuse and backstabbing bunnies inside the Playboy mansion.
HOLLY Madison, one of Hugh Hefner’s former ‘girlfriends’, has revealed tales of drugs, abuse and “backstabbing bunnies” inside the Playboy mansion in a new tell-all book.
Us Weekly have published exclusive excerpts from Madison’s book, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny.
According to the magazine’s account of the book, Madison claims she was offered drugs when Hefner discovered her as a 21-year-old Hooters waitress.
“’Would you like a Quaalude?’ Hef asked, leaning toward me with a bunch of large horse pills in his hand,” she wrote.
Madison says when she refused, Hefner said, “Usually, I don’t approve of drugs, but you know, in the ‘70s they used to call these pills thigh openers.”
Madison, now 35, became one of Hefner’s official seven “girlfriends” in August 2001 and by February 2002 became Hefner’s “number one” and moved into his bedroom. She says the 29-room mansion was stocked with “trays of Johnson’s Baby Oil, Vaseline and Kleenex” in every room.
She appeared in the TV show The Girls Next Door alongside Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson, which ran in the US from 2005 to 2009, followed by her own top-rated series, Holly’s World.
When the cameras stopped rolling, Madison says she was bullied by the other bunnies in the Playboy mansion, but the worst offender was Hefner himself.
She recalls one time after getting her haircut, Hefner “spat” at her, telling her she looked “old, hard and cheap”.
“Any shred of confidence I found over the last few hours was quickly evaporating,” she wrote.
Madison, who was formerly a small-town girl named Holly Sue Cullen from Oregon, says she contemplated suicide while having a bath one night.
“I learned Hef was the manipulator and that he pitted us against one another,” she wrote.
“I realised I wasn’t treated well. I’m done being afraid of people. I don’t have any loyalty to Hef,” wrote Madison, who never signed a nondisclosure agreement. “I haven’t talked to him in four years, so there’s no reason to reach out now. Besides, it’s the truth.”
The founder of Playboy Enterprises even tried to buy his way into Madison’s heart, by putting her in his will.
“It was there, in black and white,” she wrote. “The will stated that $US3,000,000 would be bestowed to Holly Madison at the time of his death (provided I still lived in the Mansion). At the time, it was more money than I’d ever know what to do with … But I didn’t want it.
“I actually pitied him for stooping to that level. I couldn’t help but be offended. Did he really think he could buy me? I put the folder back on the bed just as I had found it and never breathed a word of it.”
Playboy’s most controversial bunnies
The relationship ended in 2008 after rumours Madison was having an affair with illusionist Criss Angel.
She is now married to Electric Daisy Carnival organiser Pasquale Rotella, 41, and they share two-year-old daughter Rainbow.
Hefner is yet to respond to the claims made in the book.
— Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts can get help from Lifeline (131114 or lifeline.org.au) and) Beyond Blue (1300 224 636 or beyondblue.org.au
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