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Yesterday at 22:26
Madison opened up on the experience in a reflective way on her podcast ‘Girls Next Level’
Left: Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt in 2007; Right: Pamela Anderson and Hugh Hefner in 2007
- On their Girls Next Door recap podcast Girls Next Level, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt reflected on meeting Pamela Anderson in an episode of the series
- Madison claimed that the Baywatch star would “act like we did not exist on any level in such a weird way” when she saw Hugh Hefner with his girlfriends
- Madison said there is no “beef,” but she still doesn’t know why it happened
On the Oct. 28 episode of their podcast Girls Next Level, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt remembered meeting Pamela Anderson back when they were Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends and filming their series The Girls Next Door.
At the beginning of the episode — in which they talked about the season 3 episode “My Bare Lady” — Madison, 44, admitted she was nervous to talk about Anderson’s onscreen appearance because she has “fear of people’s opinions.”
“It’s not like a beef thing, and it’s not like I want to out this person because it’s kind of a dumb thing,” she explained. She wanted to talk about it, she said, because she perceives the behavior “differently” now than she did then.
“Back in my 20s, if somebody was really rude or standoffish to me, especially consistently, I assumed it was a major problem,” she explained. But now, in part because of her own autism diagnosis, she has a different perspective on those interactions.
Hugh Hefner (center left), Pamela Anderson (center right) and many Playboy models. Holly Madison is seen front center in 2003
At the start of the television episode, Hefner (who died in 2017 at the age of 91) and his three on-screen girlfriends — Madison, Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson — attend the Playboy Legacy Collection event, which celebrates the magazine’s history with some of its most iconic photos. Frequent cover star Anderson, now 57, makes a surprise appearance, and while Hefner is thrilled, the girls are not.
Madison explained on the podcast that often when she talks about her past as a Playboy playmate living in the mansion, she’s asked about which celebrities were nice or which ones were not, and Anderson fell in the latter group.
“It was just that she would do this weird thing where she’d always come up to Hef wherever she would run into him … And she’d, like, fawn all over him, and then he’s surrounded by all these girls,” she remembered. But then, she claimed, Anderson wouldn’t acknowledge Hefner’s girlfriends.
“She would act like we did not exist on any level in such a weird way,” she said. “The only reason I’m bringing this up is I remember feeling like it was so strange that I wondered what is that all about.” She added that it changed later on and Anderson “would acknowledge me a little bit toward the very end.”
Holly Madison (left) and Bridget Marquardt in 2010
“On the episode where she brings out the cake naked, she gives me a big hug,” Madison remembered, referring to the season 4 episode “Hot Chocolate.” “But in the beginning, it was so distinct. And nobody else was like that,” she said, recalling friendly encounters she had with Jenny McCarthy, Carmen Electra and Paris Hilton.
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Madison added that at the time, she assumed Anderson must have been close to Hefner’s ex-wife Kimberley Conrad, whom he divorced in 2010. Or “maybe she was at such a weird level of fame where people always wanted something from her that didn’t feel comfortable talking to people,” she speculated. “Or maybe she had an experience where she tried to talk to Hef girlfriends before, and it went really poorly.”
Marquardt, 51, added, “I thought it was weird too that she completely ignored us and but yet fawned so heavily over Hef when his girlfriends are literally sitting right there.” She said that if that happened now with her fiancé Nicholas Carpenter, there would be a “problem.”
“I guess when people act like that, they just assume we’re all just there strictly for the money and don’t give a f—,” Madison added. “But that wasn’t the case with us.”
Madison didn’t want listeners to think she didn’t have empathy for Anderson. “Look. I’m the most socially awkward person on the planet. I’m sure there’s a million people, especially from pre-2004 mansion era, who would love to come forward and say what a f—— b—- I am. So, I get it, but also I don’t because it was so extreme and so every single time.”
Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson, 39, starred on The Girls Next Door for five seasons, from 2005 to 2009. The sixth season followed three new girlfriends, including Crystal Harris, who wed Hefner in 2012 and was with him until his death.
Madison opened up to PEOPLE in 2023 about what living in the Playboy Mansion was really like — and the lasting effect it had on her.
“I would definitely say that living in the mansion created a body dysmorphia for me because I was always kind of wondering what’s wrong with me,” she explained. “[Hugh] had a way of making me feel like I wasn’t pretty enough, and I would look around to everybody else and constantly be wondering, what’s so different about them and why are they so much better?”
“It was constantly like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I change? How can I look better?” she said. Madison began dating Henfer in 2001 and in 2015 recounted her life in the mansion in her memoir Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny.
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