Holly Madison is opening up about what it was really like to film the first season of the hit reality television show Girls Next Door.
“The first couple of episodes, we felt like we were characterized in a way that really wasn’t flattering,” Madison, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly on April 28, while promoting season 3 of The Playboy Murders, which premieres on Monday, May 5.
“I was watching it, like, this is character assassination. I don’t like it,” she continued. “But as the seasons go on, we’re allowed to show more of our personality, and I think viewers got to know who we really are more — so that feels good.”
Madison starred in the hit E! Network’s reality series alongside Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson from 2005 to 2010 as one of the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s three main girlfriends. In the show’s final season, the focus shifted to Crystal Hefner and twins Kristina Shannon and Karissa Shannon.
(Hugh and Crystal married in 2012 and remained a couple until his death in 2017. Crystal recently announced her engagement to James Ward.)
Madison went on to tell Us that she “can’t believe” that it’s been nearly 20 years since the series aired, adding that “in some ways it feels like [it’s been] even longer.”
“And in some ways, it feels like yesterday,” she added. “It’s just — time flies.”
Madison went on to explain that for both her and her costar Marquardt — who now cohost the hit podcast “Girls Next Level” together — it could be difficult to look back at those earlier seasons, especially when the pair initially had such fond memories of the experience.
“I think [Bridget] had just tied everything up in such a positive bow and had kind of forgotten any of the negatives,” Madison told Us. “So when we go back and rewatch and comment on it, she’s like, ‘Oh my god, I forgot about this.’ I remember after watching the first episode, she’s like, ‘I don’t think I can do this podcast.’ I’m like, ‘No, it gets better. I promise.’ I had already rewatched a lot of it from YouTube and that’s what gave me the idea to do the podcast. And I’m like, ‘Trust me, it gets better. The hardest part is season 1 and then it gets better.”
Madison told Us that she believes one of the reasons why fans seem to have an affinity for the reality show nearly two-decades later is because it was “truly the most bizarre show that was ever on television.”
“It was something that was packaged as just this family friendly cotton candy cartoon, but it had a really dark underside and a really dark reality that I don’t think people even realized until my book came out in 2015,” she continued, referring to her book Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny.
“And there’s two different ways you can watch the show,” she added. “You can just sit back at it and appreciate the eye candy and the fun stuff we got to do, or you can look at it knowing what was really going on behind the scenes and seeing all those layers … It’s almost like every successful show in the past has been rebooted in some way or another except Girls Next Door. It’s kind of the one you can’t do.”
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