The former Playboy Playmate reveals that her ex Hugh Hefner once screamed at her and said that her short hair made her look 'old, hard and cheap' after she chopped off her long locks as a confidence booster.
- Dec 8, 2021
AceShowbiz - Holly Madison has opened up about her time living in the Playboy mansion. In a new clip from the upcoming docuseries "Secrets of Playboy", the former star of "The Girls Next Door" unveiled mental and emotional anguish she suffered from living in the Playboy empire.
"I felt like I was in the cycle of gross things and I didn't know what to do," the former Playboy Playmate and ex-girlfriend of the late Hugh Hefner said in the explosive clip for the forthcoming A&E docuseries, which is set to debut on January 24. She added, "I got to a point where I kind of broke under that pressure and being made to feel like I needed to look exactly like everybody else."
Holly further unveiled the mental and emotional anguish she endured as a Playmate from 2001 to 2008 at the hands of Hugh, who died of sepsis in 2017 at age 91. She said that one time, she chopped off her lengthy golden locks to boost her confidence.
"I came back with short hair and he flipped out on me," Holly, who ultimately deemed her affiliation with Playboy a "dangerous choice," said of Hugh. The blond bombshell recalled, "He was screaming at me and said it made me look old, hard and cheap."
Holly's friend, Jonathan Baker, confirmed her claims of Hugh's outrage in the sneak peek of the show. "I remember when she cut her hair," the 41-year-old model's buddy said. "He was very unhappy about it. Yup, his world."
"Hef would be pretty abrasive in the way he said things to Holly," Bridget Marquardt, a former Playmate and Holly's "The Girls Next Door" co-star, chimed in. Bridget added, "She came down with red lipstick one time and he flipped out, said he hated red lipstick on girls and [told her] that she needed to take it off right away."
Bridget went on to say that it's "very frustrating to live with every day." She continued, "All of the drama that was going on and the tension. I could definitely see that [Holly] was getting depressed and sad and her demeanor was starting to change."
Holly wasn't the only Playmate to experience Hugh's dark side. Another Hugh's ex, Sondra Theodore, said, "Hef pretended that he wasn't involved in any hard drug use at the mansion, but that was just a lie." The Playmate from 1976 to 1981 added, "Quaaludes down the line were used for sex," noting the "lovely" sensation the hypnotic sedative induces.
"Usually you just took a half [of a Quaalude]. But if you took two, you'd pass out," Sondra shared. The 64-year-old elaborated, "There was such a seduction, and men knew that they could get girls to do just about anything they wanted if they gave them a Quaalude."
Lisa Loving Barrett, Hugh's former secretary and executive assistant, supported Sondra's allegations that the businessman gave drugs to women for sex. "Quaaludes were what we called leg-spreaders. That was the whole point of them," Lisa said in the preview for the 10-hour exploration into the Playboy empire. "They were a necessary evil, if you will, to the partying."
