Something Was Wrong - S15 E1: [Holly Madison] They're Not Bobbleheads

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

*Content warning: emotional and sexual abuse. For free and confidential resources, please visit: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Girls Next Level Podcast Girls Next Level on Instagram: @girlsnextlevel_podcastFollow Holly on Instagram: @hollymadison To purchase SWW merch, please visit: represent.com/store/somethingwaswrongArtwork by the amazing Sara Stewart @GreaterThanOkay - Instagram.com/greaterthanokaySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. I'm Candace DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psychy Daily, I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butter killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychy Daily in the Amazon Music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. Episodes discuss topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual

violence, suicide, and murder. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com slash resources for a list of nonprofit organizations that can help. I'm not a therapist or a doctor. Most names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent my views. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes.

Thank you so much for listening. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more.

I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I'm a little bit more. I was raised in Alaska in a very rural town called Craig, Alaska. I moved to Oregon when I was in middle school and it was very much a culture shock to me. Moving from living out in the middle of nowhere to living in a normal town felt like a lot. I was also an undiagnosed on the spectrum when I was younger and I had a really, really difficult time connecting with people and the fact that I was moving around a lot. In my pre-teen years wasn't really helpful for that. It was not the biggest trauma in the world, but it created like a permanent feeling that I still have today where I'm always afraid of having the rug pulled out from under me. The second you get into a new school and think you found some kind of a place for yourself, it's like, oh, we're moving again. That created this uncomfortable thing in my life that still goes on

today where I'm still constantly never really feeling safe and always feeling like the rug is going to get pulled out from under me. And I think growing up being on the spectrum and not understanding what that meant and having such a hard time connecting with people, it made me want to be famous. I didn't realize I was on the spectrum until just a few years ago, actually, when my mom said something because I was never told when I was younger, looking into it and diving into it more and talking about it with my therapist. It was so helpful for me to understand who I am and who I was and why I made some of the choices I made.

The way being on the spectrum manifests with me isn't how it manifests with everybody else. They call it a spectrum for a reason. There's so many different ways it can manifest. But for me, just having the understanding of why I am the way I am, how I feel, the way I do, how I connect with people, and my difficulties connecting with people, some of the things about me that I always felt were a little different.

It's such a gift to me to be able to understand that. And I even want to go into it deeper and get even more testing and evaluation different places because I'm fascinated by it. I've even been able to explain that to other people and helping them understand maybe why I'm not the most relatable. At all times, it was really helpful. It was a relief to me to find out. I think I was never told because nobody wanted to make me feel like I was different

or like I couldn't do anything. When I was a kid in the 80s autism wasn't Discussed quite as much or as often diagnosed as it is now. I'm really grateful to know now People ask when you were younger like why would you want to be famous? And I think at the time I thought that's the biggest adventure you could ever go for. Like why not? Who wouldn't want to be on TV or in the movies? But looking back on it, I understand that why I wanted to do it was this subconscious need to want to connect with people

and feel like I could do that through a pair of social relationship. If I was famous, I would have this shortcut to connecting with people. People would feel like they knew me and understood me and spoiler alert. That's not how it works at all, but I think at the time I thought unconsciously or subconsciously thought that it did. out of my small town and go to LA and live a fabulous life. That's what eventually brought me to the Playboy Mansion. I was in college, I transferred to Loyola Marymount in LA. I was going to school, I was a double major in psychology and theater.

I was also working as many hours as I could, just to pay the bills, also trying to audition and going out and doing my head shots and getting an agent and things like that, but also keep my grades up so I could keep my scholarships. So I was trying to do so much that I was crashing and burning it all of it. The first time I met Hath, I didn't think much of it. I had gotten invitation to come to one of the big Playboy Mansion parties that they used to do

back in the 2000s. It was called Mid-Summer Night's Dream. It was a really exciting, hard-to-get-into party back then that everybody in LA wanted to go to. All the women who worked at the restaurant I worked at wanted to go and very few people got to. I was invited because I was working for Hawaiian Tropic and Heps Doctor had come to one of the Hawaiian Tropic events and told the organizer, oh I want to invite all these women to the next party. I was super excited I got to go.

I was blown away by the party, just how big and beautiful it was and all the celebrities I saw. I went up to have the table to introduce myself to say thank you for the invite and meet him. And he just said, oh, thank you, Garland. You're welcome or whatever. And he seemed kind of out of it. I didn't really form much of an opinion.

I didn't really think much of it at the time. But I remained on the party list, so I kept getting invited to the big parties. And eventually was invited to the pool parties that they did every Sunday in the summer. Those were much smaller parties. I would see half there sitting in a corner playing backgammon with his friends. And I thought he seemed obviously like this super accomplished person who was really generous with all his friends and

created this social world. My first impression of him was more so created by the people in his orbit than him, because in the very beginning, it didn't interact with him very much if at all. It was hearing the way everyone spoke about him in such glowing terms, because everybody who was on his immediate guest list idolized him and men and women,

they would talk about how great he was and how kind he was and what a gentleman he was. He does all this stuff for charity and all the things. I really started to form this picture in my mind of somebody who was really noble. And okay, maybe he lives this unconventional lifestyle but he's this good person that all these people look up to,

what could be wrong. I just form this opinion of him as being larger than life, and somebody that I ended up admiring very much, and looking up to, and being inspired by to a point. Have had seven girlfriends at the time that I started coming up to the pool parties, and it looked like kind of a circus. No offense to anybody, but it was this revolving door of like,

the cast was always changing, and the women would be made into playmates, and then they would leave. And it seemed, though, from my perspective that everybody, especially him, was so happy with that setup that seemed like he loved it. He loved the rotating door of new women coming through when he was proud of them. And he loved putting them in the magazine. And the women were happy because they got to live

at the mansion for a while and have fun. And they got to be playmates and all this stuff. That was what I saw from a distance. And I knew that the group went out tonight clubs a couple times a week. And I had been invited to go out with them a few times, and I hadn't taken him up on it because I very much wanted to be in the magazine, and I looked up to him, and I thought he was cool, and I thought the playboy

world was cool. But I never really thought about being a girlfriend. I certainly thought there were things about it that looked really glamorous. Like I remember he was with two women at the very first party I came to and I thought they looked so beautiful and it looked like they were having so much fun. But I never thought that would be me until one day, everything in my life kind of came crashing down. I was trying to do too many things and kind of failing at all of them. I have no money.

I was living paycheck to paycheck, I had no credit. And to live in LA, you to get a place, you have to have first and last month's rent and you have to have good credit to get an apartment. I was living with two other roommates, a brother and sister, and I thought we were renewing our lease and then one day right before the lease expired, they told me, we're going gonna get a place by ourselves, our parents are paying for it, but you can't come with us. And I was like, oh my God, I have nowhere to live because not only did that happen, but a few of the people that I knew in town,

the few friends I had, had all decided to move back home right around that time. They had come out to LA like me, looking to make it and things weren't happening. So I had nowhere to go, and I have this community up with the Playboy Mansion where I felt like I was a little bit a part of that community because I was coming up there every week, and everybody always seemed so nice, and friendly, and happy to see you, no matter who you are. Like, I was a nobody going up there,

but anytime I was there, I bought a pool of party, everybody was smiling, and remembered my name, and was so happy to see me and that really makes you feel special and like you belong. I thought you know what maybe I should take him up on his offer and go out with him and give the girlfriend thing a try. What if you were trafficked into a cult over shot nine times or fell in love with a vampire or went into a minor surgery and woke up one week later, paralyzed? What would you do? I'm Whit Missildine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast from Wondry

that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future with one choice, to a woman who survived a notorious serial killer, you'll hear their first person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Each episode is an exploration of the human spirit and personal discovery. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to ad free on the Amazon Music or Lundery app. When this was all happening, I'd gone back up to the regular pool party on Sunday and I

heard some of the staff talking about how one of his girlfriends had just got kicked out. So I knew there was an opening, so I said to him, you know, I'd love to go out with you guys. This week if the offer still stands and he said, yeah, I'll have my secretary call you. His secretary called me, gave me the information, told me where to meet at what time and I was there. The first night out was really chaotic and I definitely wasn't totally prepared for it. I thought I was prepared for it,

but thinking you're prepared for something and really being prepared are two different things. I came up to the mansion, drove my car up and parked and walked into the great hall at the time I was told to be there and there was another woman sitting on the bench in the great hall. She was new. I didn't recognize her as one of her friends and I thought oh shit somebody else has got my spot you know because I knew there was this one spot open and I needed a place to live so that was my goal there. She said to me after after I sat down next to her, she goes,

you know, after everybody goes out to the club, everybody comes home and jumps into bed together, right? And I go, oh yeah, yeah, I know that. Trying to play it cool, like I knew at the whole time. I assumed obviously that he had sex with his girlfriends or something, but I didn't really know what went on. Exactly. sex with his girlfriends or something. But I didn't really know what went on exactly. I didn't know if he had sex with them one-on-one

or was it all together or was it just one of the girlfriends or was it more of like a voyeur thing for him? I really didn't know. We didn't have the type of gossip and information online back then that we do now. And there was nothing like that out there. There had been girlfriends he'd had in recent years who'd been interviewed.

And nobody really talked about it. I know one of them went on Howard Stern and said they didn't have sex. I found out later she got kicked out for it and he was very unhappy about that. But at the time, people were guessing what was going on between happen as girlfriends. It was like he was insisting he was having sex with them,

but in a way, people didn't really believe it. They're like, oh, this guy is 75. There's no way he can keep up with all these women. This is ridiculous. It's a publicity stunt. And then there were people who were like, no way, there's no way he has all those girls living there and they're not sleeping with them.

When I went up there, I was thinking I was ready if something was going to happen to sleep with him, but I also thought that this was my first time out with them. I didn't think I would be expected to do anything necessarily. I thought I would kind of be, I don't know about briefed on what was going on, but I would have a chance to find out what went on before.

I partook. I certainly didn't think it was going to be a group sex situation where I was expected to go first. You thought never occurred to me? You know, because it was my first night out, I was the new person. This is coming from a person whose mindset is don't sleep with someone until you've been on three dates at least. That was kind of like the prevailing wisdom at the time. I have this vision in my mind of half being this gentleman. I thought I would just see what went on and I thought if I was uncomfortable with it, I could leave.

Well, the first night was really weird. We went out to the club. I drank a ton because I was so nervous. And I was having fun to you. The other girls who are really friendly, particularly one of them who I would find out later made at her ammo to convince as many women as possible to come upstairs and sleep with half because that was how she won points in the group. But I was out having fun drinking a lot because

I was nervous, have offered me a coiruit at the club, I turned him down. I thought I was being tested at the time because I had seen a documentary about half, which I saw at the mansion, because he had a documentary about him made, and he showed it on one of the movie nights. They would have movie nights after the Sunday fun and the sun parties.

Usually they would show other things, but one week he wanted to show the new documentary about himself. In the documentary, it talked about how he had an incident with a secretary back in the 70s. She was in a compromised position and ended up suicide, and it had to do with drugs, and in the documentary, he said how he never wanted drugs with the mansion because of what happened, because he felt like he was being drugs with the mansion because of what happened because he felt like he was being set up for something. So I thought he was testing me.

I thought it was his way of thinking, okay, if I'm gonna let this girl into the house, what she gonna do. So I turned him down, didn't think much of it because I thought I was being tested. And we got home, I'm very drunk, I'm told, we all go upstairs, we all put on these pink pajamas. We all get on the bed. I was one of the first people on the bed before he was even there, along with the other girl who was new.

I was sitting there, so drunk, barely coherent. And the next thing I know everybody's in the bed, and I hear the girl who's the recruiter saying, do you want to get the new girl and like pushing him on top of me? And the next thing I know, it's happening. And I was like, oh, oh, okay, holy shit. All right, that happened. It was jarring. I don't remember much after that. I just remember being led away at the end of the night and I remember half saying to the recruiter, oh yeah, I get her another pair of pink pajamas and she'll stay in your room.

I crashed in her room and then the next day, I tracked half down and I said, hey, I don't have anywhere to live right now. So do you think I could stay here and we'll see how it goes? And he goes, oh yeah, we'll see how it works out. Yeah, that's fine. I moved in a few days later. And people think that's a little strange

because I talk about a situation where boundaries were crossed. And people assume you would just want to run away from that. But I didn't have anywhere to live. And that's what I wanted out of the situation. And I was like, damn, if it happened, I'm at least going to get what I want out of it. You know what I mean? I just remember feeling very used and like, well, okay, well, I'm going to get what I came here for then. I moved into the mansion a few days after that first night out and immediately, have took to me and told me this is working out very well. I'm not really sure why looking back because it all happens so quickly.

He's really good at spotting people who are kind of broken and needy and might be in a financially needy position. He knows those are the easiest people to manipulate sometimes because I look back and I'm like, well, he told me a few days after I moved in, he stopped me in the hallway one day when we just crossed paths. He's like, I think this is working out really well. And I can't really think of why he would say that because I hadn't done anything different.

I don't think than anybody else. When I moved in, I was aware that there was a nine o'clock curfew because people would talk about it at fun in the sun because it was such a bizarre thing that these grown women would have a curfew. And at the time moving in and knowing that there was a curfew, it didn't bother me just because I didn't think I would stay there very long. There were a lot of rules for girlfriends. It would evolve over the years. He got stricter and stricter. Even after I left, I would hear from the women who moved in after me that there were even more rules added, like they could only wear certain nail polish colors and things like that. I had seen half with his girlfriends for the past year coming to parties and it seemed like a revolving door where no one really

stayed more than a year or so. Everybody seemed to like it that way, including him. So I didn't think I would be there very long. I was looking for a moment where yeah, I could have this full experience living at the Playboy Mansion for a year. How many people get to say they get to do that. But also take that time and take that year to get my life together and get my life back on track. So I wasn't really looking to go out at night or like socialize. I didn't have any friends anyway. So the curfew didn't bother me. But other things bothered me as time went on.

I found out I wasn't going to be allowed to work. I had kept my weight-dressing job when I moved into the mansion. I was looking to get ahead, save money, everything that helps to still have a job in place. So if I were to decide to leave the mansion, I wouldn't have to do a whole job hunt again, things like that. But after a few months, Hath told me that I was going to need to quit my job because it made him jealous. That was a rule I didn't like.

Hath was very into controlling every aspect of his life. If you watch Girl's Next Story story you can see it and the way he would have the same routine every week, he would eat the same things on certain days of the week, he always had to have a very particular structure at the mansion, he had all these rules for his girlfriends. Probably since the end of his marriage in 98 when he started dating multiple people at a time, when I look at that timeline, it looks like the rules kept getting stricter and stricter because he would put women in the magazine

and then would leave and have success on their own or they would just leave. He seemed very resentful of that, which was nothing I saw when I was just a guest at the mansion. He put on a really good front looking like he was the happiest person on earth. I thought he loved the way everything was going with his girlfriends. I thought he would love putting them in the magazine. I thought he loved the revolving door. But once I was on the inside, I saw a very insecure person who very much resented anytime one of his girlfriends left. When half was dating multiple people, he always had what he would call his number one girlfriend. That was what he referred to as like his primary romantic relationship and then he had all these other girlfriends.

But when I moved in, the main girlfriend at the time, already had a foot out the door. She had a center fold that was coming out in a few months and I think she had another boyfriend on the side that have didn't know about, of course. She was ready to leave and all the other girls almost immediately after I moved in started saying things like, oh I think half really likes you. I think you're going to be the next main girlfriend. Like it was this really cool thing and I never thought I would be the main girlfriend simply because what I had seen before was that the main girlfriend had always been the oldest and

when I moved into the mansion I was the youngest so I never in a million years thought I would end up being the main girlfriend when the current main girlfriend left but everybody was selling it to me we went on our first trip to New York a few weeks after I moved in on a private plane. Everybody left the seat next to half empty and encouraged me to sit in it. And I thought, oh, that's so cool. You know, I get to sit next to him. Because like I said, I really admired him and looked up to him and thought he was just the coolest person. But I soon realized that it was because the other girls didn't like him and couldn't stand him. I didn't want

to sit next to him. And nobody else wanted to be the main girlfriend because that meant sharing a bedroom with him and that meant having the least amount of freedom and that meant you were going to be criticized the most and controlled the most. I didn't know that when I moved in, but they all did. So they were all heavily encouraging me. Half would talk about it to me.

Like you should move into my room because so and so was moving out, things like that. It happened really quickly. I don't even think it occurred to me that being main girlfriend was something I could say no to. If I was going to remain at the mansion, I thought, well, if that's what he wants and that's what everybody wants,

I felt like it was a flattering thing at the time. So I went with it. It was interesting seeing the process of women leaving the group. I lived with quite a few different women. There was one set of seven girls when I moved in. And there was another set of seven girls by that time, six months later. And then, so on and so forth until four years later you would finally have just me Bridging Kendra. I saw a lot of coming and going. Some of the things I saw within my first few months of living there was a few people getting kicked out. It was always

very dramatic when they got kicked out. For example one woman she was from the East Coast and she went home to visit her family supposedly, but she was really on a trip with a boyfriend. We weren't supposed to have other boyfriend, so we were living with her. And one of the other girls ratted on her, so Hep was very angry, kicked her out, packed up all her stuff in boxes, put it at the back gate for her to pick up. She was banned from coming to parties for a while. I think eventually she wrote to him and got forgiveness and was able to come back to parties. But that all seemed so dramatic. And I remember the other girlfriends gloating about it and making fun of her.

Before I moved into the mansion, the mansion itself had been my social life and my social circle. And the quote unquote family I felt that was part of when I was in LA. The thought of being excommunicated like that seemed so scary and so dramatic. Seeing things like that happen built a paranoia of getting kicked out. I felt like you can get kicked out at any moment. If somebody were to tell PEPF something about you that he didn't like and all your stuff would be packed up and I'd have nowhere to go. So that was a little fear I had going on after seeing what I saw those first few months.

My family didn't know about me moving into the playboy mansion until after I had done it. This wasn't something that I would have told them about going into and they didn't know any of the gory details, so to speak. I'm not comfortable talking about anything like that with my family, so they didn't know. And half used to lease cars for the girls while they lived there. One of the girls before me had this escalade and she had moved out and couldn't keep up with

the lease payments. So the secretary said, oh, Polly's new and she's driving this really beat up old Toyota Celica. So why don't we give her that car, not give me the car, but I was able to drive it while I lived there. Since I was able to drive that car, my dad flew down to drive my old car back up to Oregon because he had a friend who wanted to use it. When he came down, I gave him a tour of the house during the day, like half was in the office so he didn't see half.

None of the girls were at home. And he said to me, he goes, oh, so does half really live here? So that was the extent of what they knew. They didn't know anything that was going on really. And of course, through the TV show, I'm sure they got something of a better idea, but we just never really talked about it. I think they thought, as long as I seemed okay with it, which I definitely seemed to the outside world, they were fine. But I was always kind of the kid that they could never tell me what to do anyway.

So, and by that time I'm an adult, there was some interesting aspects and pressures that came with being the main girlfriend for one thing, all of her have girlfriends had to sleep with him. He wouldn't have let them live in the house and be his girlfriend if girlfriends had to sleep with him. He wouldn't have let them live in the house and be his girlfriend if they weren't sleeping with him. But something I learned really early on, this was on our first trip to New York. I'd been living at the house for

a couple years. And we went to New York because Comedy Central did a televised roast on half. I was sitting at the table during the roast and a reporter came up to me and asked me some questions and she goes, so are you guys like a traveling hair room? I laughed and I said, yeah, I guess so. And then the recruiter came up to me and she goes, what did she say to you? I told her what she asked and I told her what I said, which I had said in full lighthearted joking way. And she goes, don't say that.

Don't ever say that. We never admit to sleeping with her. We only say that his main girlfriend does. Privately, all those women were going around blaming it on the main girlfriend, saying she's the only one who sleeps with half. We don't, because nobody wants to admit to it. I know people were doing that to me too,

once I was the main girlfriend. So you kind of have a little bit more of a scarlet letter than the other girls sometimes, or at least they would want it to be that way. Everybody else acts like they don't have sex with him, but they're telling people that the main girlfriend does, because I guess that makes their story a little more believable. But it's really everybody. Another pressure I tried to get out of and did get out of, once I became main girlfriend,

I think half expected me to help usher other women into the bedroom a little more. Because the main girlfriend who came before me, he called her the mom of hand. In my experience, she wasn't heavy on recruiting other girls into the bedroom. That was the other person that I called a recruiter. But she would do things like make sure everybody felt welcome when they walked up into the main bedroom and make sure that the bathtub was running if anybody wanted to dip their feet in the tub or make sure people had pajamas or whatever.

But by the time I got there, she had one foot out the door mentally, so I don't think she was that active. But once I became the main girlfriend, he would start to say, you know, you need to be more of a mom ahead. You need to be more into making other girls feel welcome and stuff. And I just told him flat out, no, I'm not going to do that. When I look back on a relationship, he was a huge love bomber in the beginning.

He was saying, I love you immediately and telling me I was really special and just what a giving, nice person I was, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. So the love bombing is heavy. I feel like another reason I leaned into the romantic side of our relationship so much is because it gave me an easy out when it came to the pressure to recruit other women.

It's because usually when you're in love with somebody, you don't want to share them with other people. So if I leaned into that, I could lean into the, well, I don't want other people in the bedroom, which I didn't, anyway, because I found the whole thing embarrassing. Even past that first night, it became a thing that I felt like was more embarrassing and more unpleasant and more uncomfortable as time went on. I didn't want other people coming into the bedroom, but when you lead into the romantic aspect of the relationship, that gives me an excuse. So he could understand, be like, oh, well, she's just so in love, she doesn't want it.

So I got off the hook from having to recruit other girls or talk to new girls and sell the situation to them or interact with other girls in any inappropriate ways. One of the reasons I identified with Hef so much is because I was young enough that I didn't really understand duality. I didn't understand that someone could be as intelligent as him and also so petty. I didn't understand that anyone could be as famous as him and still insecure. I didn't understand that somebody could be so successful and still need to like maintain control of this weird group of girlfriends he has.

He would hit the other girls against each other because in his mind, if we were all best friends, we could all get together on any given night and be like, you know what, half, we don't wanna go out on our regular club night. Let's stay home and he wouldn't have any power. But if he hits the other girls against each other and creates a competitive atmosphere where we feel like we're constantly trying to outdo each other or are out each other's throat, then he wins.

Let's say a couple of the girls approach him and they're like, oh, we really want money. For a dress for this event, he can be like, oh, we really want money for a dress for this event. He can be like, oh, will Stacy down the hall doesn't ask for money. She's just fine without it. So then the other girls would resent Stacy for not asking as much. And it would be like war between the girls.

In the beginning, I fell for it, hook line and sinker. I thought the problem was all the other women. I thought all these other women are jealous and horrible. I saw them were probably, but I thought all the other women were like jealous and horrible and they were the problem and if they were gone, I could finally be happy. I didn't realize until seven years later, once Bridget and Kendra had left and I did have him all to myself, that he was the ultimate problem and he was the one causing all the drama and the conflict even though he tried to act like he wasn't.

So I identified with him because A, he's feeding me to love bombing, he's giving me attention. When I was new, he treated me really special and it started to make the other girls jealous. There were rumors started that I was getting more of a clothing allowance than them and they resented the fact that I was given the nice car to drive because it was more expensive than their cars. It created a lot of resentment even pretty early on. When I first moved into the mansion it was just such a relief to not have to worry about paying rent and you would be given money for clothes to buy clothes for events and to go out. Because a big part of half having seven girlfriends for him,

it wasn't just sex, it was publicity. He was known at the time for having seven girlfriends. That was kind of his gimmick. And one of the reasons people were paying attention to him again. So that was important to him. And he wanted us to look our best. You could order anything you wanted to eat at any time from the kitchen. There was a gym, there was tanning beds. You could go to the salon once a week and get your hair done.

He would lease you a car while you were there. There were a lot of benefits. So there were a lot of reasons that I was ecstatic to be there in the beginning despite a sex life that I was very uncomfortable with. He absolutely did not view men and women as equals. He was a huge scrapbook keeper. He would keep everything written about him in the press, in the office every day.

His secretaries would print out everything that was sad about him in an article online. He would have all his press clippings. At one point, I came across an interview he did in the 60s, and I've tried to find this interview. When I was doing the secret to playward documentary, I tried to find it to show them, and it couldn't track it down. But it was an interview he did in the 60s,

where he full on said he knows men and women aren't equal. And he said it was because the only intellectual discussions he'd ever had were with his male friends and he couldn't have them with females. So he quote unquote, knew that men and women were not equals. Bridgett started coming out with the group in 2002. So maybe like nine months after I had moved in,

I liked her right away. I thought she was so fun and so cute and really positive. I could tell she really wanted to be there because she thought playboy was a really cool brand like I did at the time and she wanted to be a part of it and she wanted a new part of the mansion life. We had a lot in common that way and slowly eventually we became friends. It took time because in the short nine months I'd been there I learned not to trust anybody. So it took a while, but eventually we became friends

and we became close. I would say we started becoming friends and hanging out maybe a year after I moved in. I've been feeling isolated and a drift within the group until then, and then at least I had one friend. Kendra moved in about a year before the TV show started filming, but Kendra had it so much easier than Bridget and I did because Bridget and I dealt with so much drama, with all the other women that lived there and all the triangulation and the manipulation have

would do. We were constantly stressed out, constantly feeling like the rug was going to be pulled out from us at any moment, which is something I'm sensitive to anyway. We were already like conditions and had gone through it. By the time Kendra moved in. And when Kendra moved in, all the other girls got kicked out around that time because it was bad up with them. So it was just me, Bridget and Kendra, and we tried really hard to make Kendra feel welcome.

All Bridget and I wanted was a group that got along because we had been so miserable with those other women. We tried really hard and that first year that Kendra lived there before the show started filming. It was just a nice year compared to what we've been through before when I look back on my scrapbooks from that year. It was 2004. I remember feeling so much more relaxed than I have the previous three years.

You know, it seemed like a really fun and easy year. People asked me if the relationship was so bad, why did you stay for so long? And there's so many aspects to that and so many ways I could answer that. But one of the aspects is because it was really bad the first couple of years, but then things did start to get better. So you have hope and you years, but then things did start to get better. So you have hope and you think, oh, things are starting to get better. I'm already with this man.

I'm already invested. Everybody looks at me as this weirdo who's dating an older man. I feel like I have a scarlet letter on my forehead, which made me a little bit afraid to leave the house too. And I thought, you know what, things are getting better. There is hope. When you look at my

experience, any of the positives that came out of it, they were all at the end of the experience, within the last three or four years. In 2004, a producer, a friend of Heps, was talking to him about possibly doing a show about him and his sons called Growing Up Hefner. Heps didn't want to do that because he wasn't really a hands-on dad. And he did not want to do a show about going to PTA meetings and helping his kids with his homework and stuff. But he did very much want to do a reality show so they decided to do a show about the staff at the mansion and they interviewed the three of us girls for the show. It wasn't supposed to be about us. It was supposed to be about the staff and all the crazy demands that Heth and his spoiled girlfriend's have. So they interviewed us for that and when the executives

at E saw the interviews, they said, okay, we want the show but we want it to be through the eyes of the girls. When we shot the pilot for it, Bridget and I were asked to participate. The subject of the pilot was, I was throwing a party for Bridget's birthday. Bridget and I, for the past couple of years, had been official tour guides at the mansion. Halfwood allowed tours for like, servicemen or charity winners and things like that.

The couple of times a week there would be tours. And Bridget and I would get the tours in the budding costume and everything. So we were pretty well versed in the PR aspect of Heft's life and Heft's world and how he wanted the brand represented. So we were asked to participate in this pilot. I was really comfortable with it at first

because I didn't feel like the focus was on me. I thought like, oh, I'm doing a favor for Heft, cool. And then after the pilot, the show was ordered but it was supposed to be about the three of us girls. The show was called Girls Next Door, and we were told the show was gonna be about us, but we were not going to be paid for it. We didn't even get our name and the credits.

In the very beginning, you see this cartoon of us, and you see our first names, but we don't even have our name and the credits at the end or anything. It wasn't a choice, it was another thing before being a girlfriend you're expected to go with half on all his outings. We have a very busy schedule that week.

And the show was just kind of tacked on almost as if it would be like, okay, on Wednesday we're going to this club. It was like, okay, this day you're filming this and we weren't paid for it or asked if we wanted to do it or anything. I was compared to like a YouTube family or something like a family. You'll put their kids on their YouTube and not even ask. It's just like you guys are living here. You're part of the furniture. You're doing this. They very much had one dimensional characters in mind for us when they started

the show before we started filming. Have stopped me in the hallway one day, and he's like, I've decided on your characters for the show. Kendra's the one who wants to have fun, Bridget's the one who wants a career, and you're the one who cares about me. I remember being kind of offended because I wanted a career too,

but it's not a bad thing to be the person who cares about someone, so I couldn't really argue with it, but I remember thinking that was very much not true to who I was, because I always wanted a career, even though I wasn't allowed to work while I was at the mansion. At the time, I was in the school for real estate investment, and I was always taking acting classes and on camera hosting classes, I always been very career oriented throughout my whole life. Then, as I saw the first couple of episodes, it became very clear that they were following that formula.

The only thing about me you see on screen is that I'm Heps Partner and I have his back 100% and Kendra's just being goofy and unassuming and then Bridgett really wants to be a playmate. The executive producer of Girls Next Door from the beginning told me right after the episodes were finished that he thought of the first episode of season one of my episode, the second episode of season one, as Bridget's episode and the third episode as Kendra's episode. And even back when the show first came out, I hated my episode, rigid hated her episode, Kendra got off scot-free in her episode.

And yeah, it sucks to be introduced to the world that way because when people watch reality TV, they're relaxing and unwinding at the end of the day and letting the TV take over their brains and we want to believe whatever we see on TV. So people think that's who you are. In the first episode, they use cuts of me looking to the side. They use the same cut twice in the episode, so you can even see it looking back. But they make it look like I'm really angry at Kendra

or like giving her a dirty look when I'm not. They use a cut from an interview where I'm talking about the girlfriends in the past, where I said we really weren't getting along. So I think half needs to get rid of the other girls but they took that sound bite to make it sound like I was talking about Bridget and Kendra and I am on the record even back then I pointed that out we did a girls next door coffee table book back in the day where I talk about that in the commentary and in one of the best

of episodes I talk about how I hate that episode. I think it's episode where they make me look like a bitch. Bridget, they do a horrible job of in episode two. They make it look like she's really jealous of all the playmates and really trying to get them drunk on the night before their tests. So they fail, which isn't true at all. Bridget and I were always very supportive of the other playmates. Things were just so toxic at the mansion and so miserable with the other girlfriends that at one point in time I said, okay, anytime a new girl arrives at the mansion to test for playmate because anytime a woman was blown out

to do the test shoot, she would stay at the mansion guest house. I was gonna meet them at the gate and show them around and make friends with them so they had somebody to talk to. And we made friends with all the playmates that way and everything was great between us and them. So it was really disheartening to see them paint bridge at that way when it's not true. And then Kendra's episode and episode three, she was lucky, she got off very easy. They just made her look very humble and very family oriented and everything.

Over time, our personalities do come out on Girls Next Door. Like, once you get halfway through season three and into seasons four and five, our personalities come through and I'm so grateful to the fans of the show for sticking by us and seeing that. And through that fan base, I've been able to have so many amazing opportunities since then. But they really tried to do a sturdy in those first few episodes and it does suck to be introduced to the world that way because people accept it. Sometimes when people only see those episodes, they walk away thinking, oh, Holly and Bridget are horrible, but I'd love to work with Kendra.

So it really sets some people up for success and others not so much. It was interesting to be known from the show and a little bit different than probably what other people go through when they get their first big break because Bridget and I had been living with half for four years and had been in the shadow of his fame and all the fuss that was always around him every time We would go out with him. So when we became quote unquote famous It didn't really feel any different and we didn't feel famous. It felt like we were still standing in half shadow because we were still on a tight leash and weren't really allowed to go do much without him. So we never really felt famous. I think I made the mistake of going on the eOnline message boards back in the day,

like once our third episode came out, and when you read comments or anything about you on the internet, it's just brutal. And back then, this was in 2005, and celebrities hadn't really started talking about the negativity on the internet publicly yet, or cyber bullying wasn't really talked about too much. So I kind of thought we were the only ones getting this hate.

That felt horrible and was semi-traumatizing. That was the first thing I remember happening that felt different. Over the years, of course, I had experienced so much love from the fans and I've had so much opportunity because of the fans of the show. But that was more of a slow boil. That was more something I felt and discovered over the years, more so after I left the mansion than when I lived there. I feel like we were isolated from feeling the extent of the spotlight we were in because we were so controlled. In the beginning, it was really frustrating because Girls Next Door was just an extension

that has control over us. I've been told since then by the production company that did Girls Next Door, that the producer after a few episodes started to feel really guilty like we need to give these girls something. They're the main characters. They need to get paid. The other partner on that show was Altholoma, which was Heff and Playboy's production company. And when they talked about what should they pay us, Heff said, don't pay them anything, they're taking care of. So that decision came straight from him. It didn't come from the network,

it didn't come from the other production company. But eventually, we did get paid, e-ordered eight episodes for season one initially, but the ratings were so good that they ordered more. And we ended up getting paid once those additional episodes were ordered for season one. The reason we got paid is because I went to have Secretary's office, Mariel Connor, and I told her, you know what, I'm spending money to do this show because doing a show like that, obviously you want to look good so you're buying

clothes and if the show involves, oh, we're going to Vegas for a day. We're paying for our plane tickets. Or if the show involves going to the party store to get decorations for a birthday party, we're paying for that, like, everything on a show that usually a show would pick up the tab for Bridget and I were paying for out of our own pockets.

And Kendra too, if she was doing anything. I showed Mary all these receipts, and I'm like, I'm spending money to be on this show and she's like, well, this isn't right, we need to get you guys paid. She called somebody and made something happen and we ended up getting paid later on down the road, the same thing happened when I complained about not having our names and the credits at the end. And they just wanted to put our first names, I said, no, it needs to be our first and last names. She got on the phone with somebody. She's like, the girls need their names and the credits.

And they need their last names. They're not ball heads. I feel like people are very judgmental when it comes to hips. Number one, girlfriend. I don't know what they're imagining in their head or what they think is going on, but I feel like you kind of bear a heavier burden

of public opinion than another girlfriend who might be in the group. At least that's how I felt when I was new and still continued to feel. I felt like everybody's just looking at you with like a what's wrong with you whereas they can look at Richard or Kendra and think, oh they're just there to have fun

or they're just there to be in the magazine and that's okay, but what's wrong with that other one? As far as the pressure to look a certain way, that was never ending. I never felt like I was pretty enough. I have stopped putting his girlfriends in the magazine right around the time I moved in just coincidentally. I think you would got fed up with the fact that he would give someone a centerfold and they would leave right after. When I was moving in, I thought he seemed fine with that because he seemed so happy on the outside, to the outside world.

But he wasn't and he stopped putting women in the magazine and that gave me a complex like, what's wrong with me? Because it's not like he said to us, oh, you know, I've come to a decision with the editors, we're not putting my girlfriends in the magazine anymore, or something, he kind of left that carrot out dangling because he wanted to attract as many people as possible. So everybody thought they had a chance a little bit, but I thought, God, I must be so ugly. Like, what's wrong with me? What is it that I don't see? Like, why am I not good enough?

Especially with all the triangulation and the way he treats new girls better. Like, they're the shiny new toy. It just kind of like wreaks havoc on yourself a steve. It's still something that sits with me. It's still something that I get really paranoid about is the way that I look, even though I know I shouldn't be paranoid about it. The show started off being another element of Haps' control over us for his benefit,

but eventually while he was basking in the glow of the popularity of the show, we were coming into our own through the show, because this time went on, we could only film the same Groundhog State traditional yearly events at the mansion so many times, so the producers would start to dig into more what do we want to do and what are we doing,

and can we actually go on a trip and have what actually let us go on an overnight trip. The first night I spent one night away from him was after I'd been with him for like five or six years. We were allowed to go on a skiing trip to ask Ben or to veil for one night and that was like my first night away and that was only okay because he was sending security with us and it was for the TV show. There's cameras on us at all times. So obviously we're not going to be cheating or running around with other guys or anything. Eventually we got to do things for the show that made us feel more confident and gave us more independence. I

started working at the Playboy Studio as an editor for the last two years that I lived there and having a job and being in charge and learning new skills that gave me such a sense of empowerment and the show ended up saving my life in that way. My relationship with have changed a lot because of the show. For one thing, the group sex nights weren't happening anymore. I don't remember when that stopped exactly, but it was some time after we started filming the show, we got so busy with filming the show and doing different activities

that he no longer had the energy to do everything we needed to do for the show and still go out to nightclubs two nights a week. That was always the night that the group sex would happen, as we'd go out to a club, every room get wasted and then we come home and be expected to go upstairs. That stopped at some point after we started filming the show, we stopped going out to nightclubs regularly. And he didn't seem to mind because I think for him his compulsion and his ego gratification

and everything was coming from the fact that he had these seven girlfriends that he had control over and he was having these sex nights a couple nights a week and he was bringing all these other girls up into the bedroom that he was having sex with and things like that. Then the show once it was a hit, that was his ego gratification and that was what he was preoccupied with. Making plans for the show and watching broadcasts of the show with the executive producer and making notes and doing all the things.

That was what he was excited about. So that was his new thing. That was great for us. On another hand, I felt like heaps in my relationship got better and closer on a personal level and an emotional level and a respect level because one thing you have to know about him is fame was so important to him. You don't think it would be because he was

at the time such an icon. So you would think, well, you've already achieved this pinnacle of like being an icon, what more do you need. But that wasn't the case for him. He constantly craved being relevant. He craved the attention. He craved the public adulation. It was an addiction for him. He constantly craved being relevant. He craved the attention. He craved the public adulation. It was an addiction for him. And once he saw that the show had fans. And not only did the show have fans, but I had fans. And people were fans of Hex and my relationship. And they were rooting for us. And they wanted us to get married and have kids. When he saw that, all of a sudden I had value. All of a sudden, he was a lot more respectful to me

and treated me. I wouldn't say as an equal, but closer to that, I could see that he really valued me in a way he didn't before. I'm not stupid, even at the time I knew that was why. I knew it was because he was seeing a reflection of what the public thought of me, and that's the new me that he saw,

and that's the new me that he valued. Even though I knew that, I didn't care because I was just so relieved to like finally have that respect that I felt like had been lacking because it's so weird to be in a relationship where you're being loved bombed and you're being told things but you're also being treated like shit. It's such a weird back and forth especially when you're young. It's so damaging to yourself a steam. Even though I knew that's why he valued me all of a sudden, I didn't care. I was grateful for it. I was just grateful to be treated good for a change.

I don't know if the producers felt like they had to respect us more because the fans did, but I think over time, after the first couple of seasons, they were kind of running out of ideas or half was running out of ideas because like I said, there's only so many times you can film Groundhog's Day before it starts to look the same. So they had to turn to us to get ideas of what are we going to film? What are you guys able to do within this world that's different that we can film? And also, as we get more experience on the show, we wise up a little bit more. And I realize quickly, like, oh, there are certain things I just can't say while I have a microphone on, or they'll

use them against me and twist my words. We would sit down for these confessional interviews and they would give you a literal script of lines to say that they could cut in any way they wanted. And of course, this time goes on and you see how the episodes turn out, you wise up to it. Not that you have total control because they can always twist your words when they get any kind of dialogue from you. I remember getting to a point where I would be sitting there in the confessional and the producer would be sitting across from me and she'd be like, okay, Holly, say this and I'd be like, no, I don't feel that way. And they would argue

with me and they'd be like, no, you do feel that way. Holly, come on, you do, you do. Trying to gaslight me into saying it and I would dig my heels in and refuse. There was an arc in Hefson, my relationship that included the talk of marriage and having children. I think the marriage and children talk started happening. In 2003, I've been living there for two years, and there had already been, since I moved in, so much love bombing and talking about, I really want you to be with me for the rest of my life. And of course, his lifespan wouldn't have been the same as mine,

but that was what he was saying. And the first time I mentioned marriage or children, it was to Robin Leach from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He was working as a reporter in Las Vegas, and we went to Las Vegas for a 50th anniversary playboy party. He was interviewing me about half, and it was always super important to me when I was talking about half to the press to

Say really positive things not only because I cared about him But because I didn't want to get in trouble He was asking me are you in love with half and where do you see your future going? And I said oh yeah, I'd love to get married half kids the whole thing in an offhand way just expressing my devotion to somebody And that comment kind of took off like wildfire and got so much press. And of course, heath loves anything that gets press. And I would continue to say it to the press when I was asked.

It was definitely something I grew to want because I was already invested in this relationship that I had gotten into, only thinking I would be there for like a year, and I thought that half an eye would become close in a way, but not really a romantic sort of close type of envision myself, leaving the mansion after a year like everybody does, and we would be close friends, and I'd always be part of the Playboy family and all that, because that's what I've seen his girlfriends do as an outsider. But as time went on and I got more and more invested in the relationship and there were so many negatives

to the relationship, like the whole sex life I hated and having to deal with all their drama from the other women. And while bad things might make you think, oh, well, wouldn't you want to run from that? When there's a balance of good and bad in a way, sometimes it makes you want to sink your heels in more. And say, no, I'm going to turn this into something good

and make this work. And I deserve the respect now because I've been so right or die for this person, followed all the rules, and had to deal with all this BS. I definitely thought if we could get married and turn the relationship into something respectable, that was definitely what I wanted. And I knew I wanted to have kids eventually.

As I got into my mid and late 20s, I was like, well, damn, I better start now. And we actually did try IVF a couple of times. He was completely down to do it. He even mentions it in an off-hand way in one of the season four episodes, but nobody really catches. I think they think he's just joking,

like the way I would always joke about marriage and babies throughout the show, but that was a real thing. That was something we were doing privately. It didn't end up working out because of his age, but that was something he had been willing to do. There were several factors that led up to me deciding to leave.

One was gaining my own confidence through the show and through fan support and through working at the studio and gaining my confidence through having a job. That was part of it. I would never have been able to leave if I didn't have that confidence. But also because we had tried IVF and failed. So then I, at age 29, really needed to start thinking,

okay, I verbally and emotionally promised myself to this person, but do I really want to follow through with this? If it means I could never have kids, I might miss the only years I'd be able to have kids. So that was something that was weighing on my mind. The third and final thing that did it was Bridget and Kendra decided to leave the mansion. I finally had half all to myself,

which I thought was gonna be this easy, breezy, positive relationship. Now that the other girls were out of the way, not that Bridget was ever a problem, but there had been so much drama and triangulation in the past that I've always thought it was just us. We'd be like this quiet married couple. So the girls are the problem.

But once they left, he got really verbally abusive with me. And I realized it dawned on me that he had been the problem the whole time. He'd been the one craving the drama. And now that he didn't have the other girls to try and gillate against me, it's like he just took everything out on me. And it happened so quickly and so suddenly.

And remember, there were three different distinct moments where he grew me for a loop, like how rude he was. He would yell at me over nothing or yell at me in front of people. And I just remember thinking, I can't do this. I have to leave. I didn't really know how I was going to break it to him or what I was going to do, but I was feeling desperate. It felt kind of alarming to me because I had been for seven years trying to convince myself that this relationship was going to be it and all of a sudden it's unraveling. When you put so much effort into being there for a person and trying to be the good person for this other human and all of a sudden you want to pull the plug. You feel conflicted even if they are being an asshole to you.

I couldn't help it. I felt really conflicted. I felt really guilty. I was in Vegas for a night working on a plain-naked shoot that we were shooting at the new Playboy Club that had just opened and there was a guy I was interested in in town. And after we were done with the shoot, I decided to meet him for dinner, which is not something you should be doing when you're in a relationship with somebody else,

but nothing happened. It wasn't like we kissed or had sex or anything like that. But I didn't meet this guy for dinner and felt like I was interested in this guy. I've never been the type of person that has the bandwidth to really be interested in more than one person at once or to think about cheating or juggling or anything like that.

So that's when I knew. And then the next day, have told me that he knew I had dinner with another man because he had sent security, had security follow me, which I didn't know. And I was like, okay, so I'm going to leave. I'm going to pack up and leave and go. This is over. And he tried very hard to win me back over the next few months.

I had to break up with him several times as I was packing up my stuff. And to me that made no sense because I was like, if you knew your girl was out to dinner with another guy, wouldn't you be like, fuck off? But I don't think that was his pattern. When I look at his dating history

with his more significant romantic interests over the years, I do find that once the relationship is over, it's usually the woman who ends it, and he would try to win that woman back several times. So that was his pattern. I left, and it was emotionally harrowing for me because I did feel very, very guilty. He had trained me well. I had had his back for so many years, even though he had never truly been kind to me in that relationship, and there had always been other women, and there had always been manipulation and things going on behind my back and verbal abuse and emotional abuse. I still felt really guilty, and I just remember wishing and praying that he would meet somebody nice

and move on really quickly so I didn't have to feel guilty anymore I felt great to get my independence back But that wouldn't happen for a few more months because I went right from one controlling relationship into another Which I've noticed is a pattern that tends to happen for people like we tend to date the same guy in a way over and over until we learn our lesson I went straight from one really controlling relationship to another one where it was the same thing. I couldn't go downstairs to get a coffee by myself without someone following me or I couldn't go to work

without security following me. So it was a bumpy transition in that way that I went straight from one relationship to the next, but in a way it was the universe giving me a gift because for so many years I've made excuses for half because the situation was so bizarre and I told myself Will you knew you were getting into a weird relationship? There's all these other women Path is this weird

unconventional cultural icon and he's so much older than you so in those ways I'd allowed myself to make excuses, but when I was dating a guy who was only 10 years older than me, which is quite an age difference, but at the time compared to have that felt like nothing. And someone who's not at half-slevel and didn't have multiple girlfriends, I couldn't make excuses for that behavior anymore. I was glad that the universe showed me that behavior right after my relationship with half instead of dragging that lesson on and on. Longer through my life because I noticed a cycle that can take people multiple relationships to get out of sometimes.

I feel so blessed because I was able to do everything I wanted to do and get all the things I wanted for so many years. I had my own TV show for a while and I had my own show in Las Vegas and I made a ton of money off of that. I got married and I had two amazing kids and now I'm able to do whatever I want and express myself in whatever way I want. And just to even have a platform at all, I feel so incredibly blessed and happy. Even when I'm complaining about things from the past, I'm still really happy, so I feel good. That's what I'm loving so much about your podcast

is that you're going through each episode and I feel like it's giving y'all your voice back. It's incredibly amazing to see where you've landed now and working on this with Bridget and do you feel like it's kind of healing for your process. I feel it's so healing for Bridget and I to be able to go back and re-watch these and discuss them on the podcast. It feels like we're taking control of our lives again and piecing it together in a way that makes sense for us and sharing how we really feel. It's a lot of fun, like sometimes it's hard

and sometimes it's hard, you know, to communicate what you want to say and not be misunderstood, but we're really loving it. I love doing it. I love the show so so much. I cannot wait for all of the episodes. It's girls' next level. We will absolutely link to everything in the episode No, it's it makes me so happy to see that your friendship is still going strong and that you've continued to have that bond and that you're doing all this together

Thank you. That really means a lot to me. I am Incredibly sorry to hear of the things that you have experienced. And I am incredibly thankful to you for making the time and agreeing to participate in this. Thank you so so much for taking the time to be on the show. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of your show too, some honor to be here. Thanks for listening. People have all kinds of opinions about my story, but I love to open people's minds up to duality and that not every situation is all good or all bad and things can exist in the same space and I just love opening people's minds if I do it all. So thanks for listening. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe friends. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Ries. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow something was wrong on Instagram. At something was wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under.

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