Holly Madison is finally opening up about how she really felt watching “The Girls Next Door” back when it aired, and she’s not sugarcoating anything.
In a recent interview, Holly called the first season of The Girls Next Door a “character assassination,” claiming it painted her in a way that didn’t reflect who she really was. The show, which followed Holly, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson as Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends inside the Playboy Mansion, ran from 2005 to 2009 and was a huge part of early 2000s reality TV culture. But Holly says her portrayal in those early episodes of The Girls Next Door made her cringe.
She told Us Weekly that the first few episodes were rough: “I was watching it like, this is character assassination. I don’t like it.” While things got better as the seasons progressed and the women got to show more of their personalities, Holly still remembers how off it felt in the beginning. Over time, viewers started to understand the women beyond the glossy Playboy image, and that helped shift the tone.
Now, Holly co-hosts a podcast with Bridget called Girls Next Level, where they rewatch old episodes and give their take from the other side of fame. Interestingly, the rewatch has been eye-opening even for Bridget, who originally remembered the show with rose-colored glasses. Holly revealed that Bridget was initially overwhelmed, saying, “I don’t think I can do this podcast” after rewatching episode one. But Holly, who had already gone through a lot of the episodes on YouTube, reassured her it gets better after season one.
Even with the nostalgia and pop culture curiosity, Holly’s view is that The Girls Next Door was one of the “most bizarre shows that was ever on television.” According to her, there are two ways to watch it: as fun eye candy or with a deeper awareness of what was happening behind the scenes. Either way, it remains one of those shows that probably couldn’t be rebooted the way other early reality TV series have been.
Even years later, Holly Madison’s thoughts on The Girls Next Door prove just how layered reality TV can be when you strip away the editing and glamour. She’s not afraid to talk about the messiness, the misrepresentation, and the reality of what it was really like being one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on national television.
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