“It was so easy to get isolated from the outside world.”
Holly Madison is opening up about her experience as a Playboy Bunny in an upcoming docuseries, Secrets of Playboy.
The 10-part A&E series — which has been releasing teaser clips and trailers over the past few months — aims to lift the lid on the “hidden realities” behind the late Hugh Hefner’s empire.
In a new preview, former Bunny and Girls Next Door star Holly says life at the Playboy Mansion was “cult-like” and isolating.
“The reason I think the mansion was very cult-like looking back on it is because we were all kind of gaslit and expected to think of Hef as like this really good guy,” she says.
“And you started to feel like, ‘Oh, he’s not what they say in the media, he’s just a nice man.'”
The 42-year-old, who dated the Playboy founder from 2001 to 2008, adds: “It was so easy to get isolated from the outside world there. You had a 9 o’clock curfew. You were encouraged to not have friends over.
“You weren’t really allowed to leave unless it was like, a family holiday.”
She reveals that she initially kept her waitressing job for one day a week to have something to go back to should Playboy life not work out – something she claims Hef didn’t approve of.
“He said it made him jealous, and he would appreciate it if I quit my job,” she says. “So instead, we were given $1,000 a week as an allowance.”
Holly also addresses the expectation of sex from the Bunnies in the clip.
“The sex always kind of happened the same time, the same night,” she explains. “We would go out to a club every Wednesday and Friday and that would be expected when we got home.”
In an earlier trailer for the show, Holly describes how she “didn’t realise that getting into the Playboy world was a dangerous choice”.
Another interviewee confirms that Hef, who died in 2017, “really did believe he owned these women”.
The show will premiere in the US on January 24. No word yet on when viewers this side of the Atlantic will be able to watch.
