Original subtitles

All right. Let's get started.

Okay. Yeah, I think I need to

fix my eyeliner a little bit though.

♪

Take two

It's really hard to separate how the Playboy world

affected how I feel about the way I look

and just what's authentic to me.

People might think, "Oh, you must have felt great

'cause you were on TV and you were famous."

They think that I should have known

exactly what I was getting into.

Like, "Whoa, you're stepping into a cult there."

But I absolutely did not.

In my early 20s, I didn't realize

that getting into the Playboy world was a dangerous choice.

My name is Hugh Hefner.

I'm editor/publisher of "Playboy" magazine.

When Hugh Hefner was just 27,

he fashioned himself and "Playboy"

as the face of sexual liberation.

Playboy is one of

the most famous brand names in the world.

I would like to be remembered as somebody

who played some positive part

in changing the social, sexual values of my time.

I believe that Hef pulled one over on the whole world.

The fantasy of Playboy that he created

did not allow for the consent of the women.

When it came to Hefner's buddies,

you had to keep those secrets quiet.

What have you got for free?

When you get someone that powerful,

anything could happen. Anything.

The people who were really there,

they're the ones who know the real truth.

I want to be a voice

for the women that suffered the most at his hands.

♪ Come on-a my house

♪ To my house

♪ I'm gonna give you candy

♪ Hey

♪ Come on-a my house, my house, a-come on ♪

This was the episode where, when I saw it,

I thought I was so fat in it

because I always felt like I had to watch,

like, every tiny little thing about my appearance.

I was one of Hugh Hefner's multiple girlfriends,

and I starred in a show called "The Girls Next Door."

I feel like, on "Girls Next Door,"

Hef was portrayed as like a kindly grandpa.

That's not how he is.

It would make me so angry how manipulative he was.

Hef controlled every aspect of our life.

And after I left the Mansion,

I can't really explain to you

how strong the feeling was in me

that I needed to get my story out.

She has a new book out that is making waves

and upsetting Hef.

It's called "

Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales

of a Former Playboy Bunny."

You know, I think when I came out with my story,

a lot of people were really hostile toward it.

They would say, "Oh, you're talking all this [bleep].

You were so happy there. You loved being there."

Because so many people who are part of that Playboy world,

they don't want anything tarnishing

like that golden bubble in their life.

I knew Hugh Hefner for 44 years.

He was the one that walked me down the aisle

when I got married to Joel.

I had 27 years at the Mansion.

God love Holly, I hope she has a wonderful life.

But what she did in her book was a complete affront to Hef

and everything he stood for.

She seemed like she really liked him,

that she really cared about him.

I don't know why she would write a book like that.

People want to villainize women in these situations.

But I had so much belief in myself before I met Hef.

And then it was just shattered.

I want people to know why I felt like I couldn't leave

and why I chose to get in that situation in the first place.

We Playmates have the secret to happiness.

The secret that brings you

the world's most beautiful women.

And their outrageous video--free.

Free?

Is this like a lamp you rub or something?

No, it's Playboy.

Growing up, they used to have,

believe it or not, Playboy commercials on TV,

and they would show videos of these women

and they were always, like, so flattering.

And I was like, "Wow, I want to look like that."

Ever since I was a kid,

I've had a really difficult time

connecting with other people.

I grew up in a very, very small town in Alaska,

basically, you know, living in the woods at certain points.

Every couple years, we would move,

I'd be introduced to a new place.

I never really felt like I fit in there.

I'm also not quite neurotypical,

which I was only recently diagnosed.

Like, obviously, I've been that way my whole life.

But a few years back, my ex called my mom.

He was like, "So I can't connect with her.

Like, what is wrong with her? Blah, blah, blah."

And she was like, "Well, you know,

I'm pretty sure she has Asperger's."

And then I'm like looking it up

and like talking to my doctor about it.

I'm like, "Oh, this is 100% me, 100%."

And I've just kind of been looking back

and seeing everything through that lens now.

And I think I was drawn to try to be in the spotlight

because I felt like if I could be famous,

that would be a shortcut

to feeling a connection with people

because we feel connected to celebrities.

♪

I was very much attracted to like the Anna Nicole Smiths,

who was a supermodel at the time,

and the Jenny McCarthys

who was like the It girl on MTV

and the Pamela Andersons who was like--

she was the biggest TV star at the time.

And kind of this common denominator you notice

is they all started out as Playmates.

It made a lot of sense to infer that,

"Oh, if I start out at Playboy,

I could end up like that too because they did."

♪

The next time I encountered

anything from the Playboy world

was when I moved to California,

I was working for Hawaiian Tropic as a model.

Mark Saginor, Hef's personal doctor at the time,

was at one of the Hawaiian Tropic contests

and he extended an invitation to a Playboy party

to all the women participating.

I was really excited to go because, at the time,

the Playboy parties were really, really exclusive.

You saw celebrities everywhere.

You saw Playmates you recognized from the magazine.

And of course, I saw Hef.

At that point, everybody was giving him a ton of attention

because he was going out to nightclubs

several times a week with seven girlfriends.

- These are my girlfriends. - Every one of them

is your girlfriend? - Yes.

The image I got of Hef and his girlfriends

was one of a revolving door.

The women would come in, they would all get centerfolds.

Some of them would move on to better things.

And it just seemed like everyone was happy with that.

♪

And then in summer of 2001,

I got invited to the pool parties that they would have

on Sundays at the Playboy Mansion,

and I just saw this really wholesome atmosphere.

It was really surprising.

The whole social circle at the Mansion

just seemed like such a happy little family of friends.

So for somebody who has a horrible time

connecting with other people

to kind of fall into this place

that feels like a little community instantly

is very attractive.

On Sundays, she would sit there two or three chairs down

from where we would play backgammon.

I remember her talking to Alison and asking her,

"How do I become a girlfriend?"

Hef really didn't, like, pick her out.

She basically, you know, came to him.

I wasn't physically attracted to Hef,

but I did find him very charming.

And I feel like one of the reasons I was

so able to buy into being able to have this relationship

with an older person is I thought,

"Well, I never like connected with guys my own age.

"So maybe this is what's meant to happen.

Maybe this is a better fit."

♪

And in the amount of time I was going to parties there,

which is about a year's worth of time,

it was made obvious to me that I could join the group

anytime I wanted through some of the other women.

And of course, all the girls behind the scenes were saying

they didn't really sleep with him

and it's just all publicity.

And I felt like that was probably the case.

- Does he bang any of them? - Um... I don't know.

You don't know?

I thought living at the Mansion would be very cozy.

I felt like it would be

this really one-of-a-kind amazing sorority.

People always want to point to the money and the luxury

and--you know, that was fine.

But what really attracted me

was the sense of having a community

and a support system.

And people don't recognize how alluring that can be.

The first night I went out with Hef and the girls,

I just kind of had it in my mind that,

you know, I was gonna see what happened,

and if I wasn't comfortable with it,

I didn't have to do anything.

You know, we went out to a nightclub.

I was sitting next to Hef, and he leaned over

and he asked me if I wanted to take a Quaalude.

I said something like, "No, I don't do drugs."

And he goes, "Yeah, I typically don't either.

"But, you know, they used to call these

thigh openers in the '70s."

I just thought it was really weird.

That night, I drank a lot 'cause I was nervous.

Back at the house,

after I ended up going upstairs with them...

I don't really wanna talk about it.

There was definitely no,

like, romance or seduction

or anything like that.

It was dark in the room.

But there was a giant movie screen of porn

in front of the bed.

He was in the middle of the bed.

And then the women were surrounding him,

but they're all backlit.

I'd never had casual sex with anybody before.

I feel like I was kind of really asexual.

So maybe I just wasn't ready for that?

♪

It was all very mechanical and robotic,

and you would kind of follow the other women's lead.

And it was really gross to me

how Hef didn't wanna use use protection.

♪

The impact it had on me was so heavy.

I never expected to be

the first person to have sex that night

or to be like pushed into it.

The next morning,

I definitely felt humiliated by the experience.

But in the beginning, even after that night,

like, I still had this idea and this fantasy of, like,

all of us being like sorority sisters

and we're all gonna get along.

I think sometimes when you're not in control at all,

you can lean into a bad situation more

because you're almost fooling yourself

by thinking you are in control.

I think it's a trauma response.

So I decided to move into the Mansion.

Obviously, I told people, 'cause I moved,

and I was just shocked at how everyone reacted.

When you say you're like dating Hugh Hefner or whatever,

people assume you're getting a money exchange for sex

and they want to put you in a corner

and, you know, call you a hooker or whatever.

So I know there's that judgement out there.

And I just immediately felt dirty

and like I would be judged for the rest of my life

for making this decision.

And I never thought of it that way at all.

I thought of myself as involved with one man.

I did enjoy living at his house,

but it wasn't in a direct exchange of money for sex

or anything like that.

I don't look down on sex workers.

But it does bug me that people want to put me in that corner

because I don't feel like

I was even making that decision, really.

I had unintentionally branded myself by moving in there.

And if I thought my life was hard before,

it was gonna be really hard if I left.

And it made me just want to, like,

turn the situation right somehow.

And I didn't know how to do that.

♪ We may be wrong but

♪ We think you're wonderful ♪

At the Mansion, the indoctrination, I feel,

starts almost immediately when you're there

and you start hearing about how wonderful Hef is

from his circle of friends.

Hef provided a stunning environment.

He was a loving, decent, wonderful man,

incredible friend.

He is such a great man

with such a great personality,

and everyone was drawn to him.

Hef was a gracious man.

And he loved women.

He loved them.

He treated women with love

and honor and respect.

And I think that Hef always was a romanticist.

I'm a romantic fool.

I mean, I was raised in that impossible world

where the words of the songs are true.

And the romantic songs, the Cole Porter

and the--you know, the Gershwin.

So in the beginning,

Hef is what you would now call a love bomber.

He's somebody who tells you I love you almost immediately.

He was always telling me, you know, how special I was

and you're so giving for your age.

And, you know, he really made me feel like

I was special and rare.

You had no idea you were being brainwashed.

Now that's a little girl in love.

I was in heaven.

I was Hef's girlfriend in the '70s

and early '80s for five years.

♪

He liked the old movies,

and it's like he would become a character

and do the romantic things he saw in the movies.

You know, he'd take me in his arms,

and we'd dance around the game room.

And he said, "You're the first girl

I've liked enough to consider having a baby with."

That was his romantic way.

And people supported it.

The secretaries or whatever-- they manipulated the girls.

They--they spoke highly of him.

He comes off, you know, caring and generous,

especially when you see him in that atmosphere

because he's providing this good time for all his friends.

And, you know, they glow about him.

And you just start to build this picture in your head

of somebody who can really do no wrong.

And now, looking back, on my time at Playboy,

it reminds me of a cult.

The reason I think the Mansion was very cultlike,

looking back on it,

is because we were all

kind of gaslit

and expected to think of Hef as like this really good guy.

And you started to feel like, "Oh, he's not

what they say in the media. He's just a nice man."

♪

Another thing that reminds me of a cult is how it was so...

easy to get isolated from the outside world there.

You had a 9:00 curfew.

You were encouraged to not have friends over.

You weren't really allowed to leave

unless it was like a family holiday.

Are there are rules like can you have boyfriends at all?

- No. - No.

- You're not allowed to? - Hef is our boyfriend.

How do you know when you're called to the master bedroom?

Do you have nights? Yeah.

The sex always happened kind of like the same time

the same night.

We would go out to a club every Wednesday and Friday,

and that would be expected when we got home.

I kept my waitressing job at just like one day a week

because I wanted just to have something easy to go back to

should things not work out.

And he said it made him jealous

and he would appreciate it if I quit my job.

So instead, we were given $1,000 a week as an allowance.

I know for a fact the rules she had to follow were true.

You're imprisoned in that Playboy, like,

you can't do your own thing 100%.

When Hefner was married to Kimberley,

I'd invited Kimberley to a Sunday lunch at my house,

but she was not really allowed out of the Mansion.

So she arrived with a bodyguard

who was constantly on his telephone to Mr. Hefner.

"She's going up the stairs. She's gone to the loo."

And I was like, "Is this a joke?"

And she's like, "No, this is--this is how it is."

♪

I think in the very early first few months

that I was there,

even though not everything was to my liking,

I felt like I hadn't given the situation enough of a chance.

Love, love, love!

So I tried really hard to follow all the rules.

Welcome to the Playboy Mansion.

I'm Holly, and I'm here to give you a tour.

Come on with me. I'll show you the game house.

I saw Holly try very hard

to be like the lady of the Mansion.

Every little boy's fantasy,

a house devoted entirely to games.

We have old video games, new ones.

She really tried to get into the things that Hef got into.

They had movie nights

on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

1939.

"Gone with the Wind."

She'd be there, and she'd be very sweet to everybody.

One thing about me that was different from the other women

who lived there was I was really quiet.

I just liked to stay in,

and I loved watching the old movies

that Hef showed on Friday and Saturdays.

I liked going down to the buffet dinners

and chatting with his friends

or listening to them talk or whatever.

The other girls, they were just there to party

and have a good time.

Holly was there to be a real presence

in the Playboy Mansion.

Holly just cared about Hef.

♪

She was there to look after him.

She was a good hostess to his guests.

I thought she was right for him.

Within the first few months, I went from being new

to being like Hef's main girlfriend.

I wasn't into the multiple girlfriend thing.

It's not about them. It's just about

I would obviously rather be in a relationship

where it's just me and one other person.

I was expected to order his drinks for him

and like always stand next to him in pictures

and to move into his room.

Now, what is it about Holly?

Well, I think, despite the age disparity,

I think she's an old soul.

I think we have very common interests

in terms of the way we enjoy spending our time.

She loves old classic films,

she loves the same kind of music I love.

I think what switched for me

was when Hef started using me as a tool and saying,

"Well, why can't you just behave like Holly?

"Why can't you just show up to all the movies?

Why can't you do this like her?"

Then everybody hated me.

One of the girlfriends

started working as a liaison for this escort service.

And she started trying to recruit

all the other girlfriends.

When she was found out,

she thought it was me who told on her, and it wasn't.

And I remember I had the flu

and I was laying down in Hef's room.

He was downstairs somewhere.

And she like comes up the bed screaming in my face,

and I like can barely move,

so it's kind of like a scary situation.

And I kind of had a breakdown

because I thought she was gonna hit me,

and like I have to live with these people.

So I was completely isolated until Bridget came along.

Bridget, how did you come aboard?

Um, I came to the Mansion pursuing to be in the magazine.

I really wanted to be a Playmate

and started going out as the big party posse.

I think that Holly and I bonded because

I was very clear about not wanting her position.

Some of the girlfriends would have liked to take that spot.

They wanna just like still break all the rules

but still get all the perks.

I knew that Holly would want a life

without all the extra girlfriends.

In five years from today, Holly, what are you doing?

Um, I wanna be married, have kids,

and still be working at Playboy.

- With Hef? - Yeah.

I think I definitely thought I was in love with Hef,

but it was very Stockholm syndrome.

Very Stockholm syndrome.

So Stockholm syndrome is when somebody starts to identify

with somebody who is their captor in some way.

And I feel like I did that with Hef 100%.

Like, I never blamed him for any of the drama that went on.

I always blamed it on the other women, you know.

Hef was innocent in my eyes.

And then later, one of the girls was telling me

how Hef always pits the main girlfriend

against the other girls.

This situation was going on for years before I came along.

- What do you see? - Patty and Laura.

This must have been the Playmate party.

And that's when I met all these girls.

And they were very, very mean to me at this point.

When I was Hef's girlfriend, every girl wanted my position.

See, all the girls wanted to be in my shoes.

They wanted to be the girl walking down the path with him,

sitting next to him.

He would pit us against each other.

You know, there was always a little tiff

going with different girls.

And, you know, if everybody was a little unsure of themselves,

then he could have his way.

It was like we were in this competition.

And when I look at somebody who's

struggling to create all this drama amongst people

so he can feel like people are fighting over him,

I'm like, "What hole are you trying to fill?"

♪

My name is Richard Bann,

and I was lucky enough to meet Hugh Hefner in 1990.

And I knew him as one of his closest personal friends

until he died.

♪

As a kid, he was uncomfortable approaching young ladies.

And he didn't always succeed.

In high school,

he was gonna invite Betty Conklin to a hayride.

And she rejected him.

She went instead with one of his close friends.

This was a watershed event in his life.

What he did was he reinvented himself.

He changed his wardrobe, he changed the way he spoke

in hopes of being able to attract

someone like Betty Conklin.

I'm a rebel.

A man ought to work hard and play hard too

because you only get one time around in this old world,

and if you don't make the most of it,

you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Betty Conklin represented

the "Citizen Kane" Rosebud of his life.

She was the template for the girl next door.

Hef created "Playboy" magazine and this whole empire

to work out the failed relationship

he had with Betty Conklin.

With Hef, I don't really know what's true or what's not.

He would tell people in the media

and, of course, they loved to run with that

as like the moment that changed everything.

But it's not just a girl invited somebody else

to a hayride in high school.

The way he treats people,

there's gotta be something more going on

under the surface.

There's got to be something darker.

Because when I was there,

I felt like he wanted to have control over me

and the other women who were there.

Hef wanted to know,

"How does somebody control somebody?"

When we first started dating in the late '70s,

he was fascinated and obsessed with Charles Manson.

♪

Couldn't talk enough about him.

How does this guy have these women

that have been in jail for how many years

and when they have a chance to get out,

they're still adoring him,

and they will till the day they die.

And Hef liked that.

In Hef's film collection,

he even had the Manson family "home videos"

made before the murders,

the girls with guns and knives out at the ranch.

You have to know it so that

you could pick it up any second and shoot.

There were so many similarities--

the way the girls followed everything he said,

and we were all one big happy family.

♪

He would say things like,

"If you can get along with everybody,

we can be together forever."

That's how he reeled me in. I wasn't gay.

But he would whisper in my ear, you know, "Go talk to her.

Go talk to her and see if she wants to party."

Finally, one day, I just, "Oh, geez!

Okay. I'll try it once."

Yeah. Yeah.

He was happy.

That was exactly what he had asked for so long.

But also, that wasn't enough.

He had to have more and more and more.

It just got ugly

because I felt like I was a ringmaster.

I felt like I had to put the show on every night.

And it's the same script.

"Welcome to the family. We're embracing you."

It was all a lie.

I watched girl after girl after girl show up,

fresh face, adorable, and then...

their beauty just washed away.

They were tired.

I saw clearly that we were nothing to him.

Hugh went through decades of young girls, decades.

He said to me, "What I do is

I find somebody whose looks I like,

that I'm really attracted to, for all the obvious reasons,

and then I project onto them whatever it is I want to see

and I block out everything else."

By the early 2000s,

the girlfriends were always these interchangeable,

replaceable sex objects to Hefner.

I think it probably gave him a feeling

of being more in control if we all looked identical.

How do you tell each other apart?

'Cause y'all have the same kind of blonde hair.

Yeah.

The plastic surgery amongst the girlfriends

in the Mansion was compulsive.

Everybody was doing it with very few exceptions.

I remember being made to feel

like I needed to look exactly like everybody else.

When I asked him if I could ever test for Playmate,

he said I'm just not photogenic enough.

So of course, what that does to you is it makes you wonder,

"Wow, what's wrong with me?

Like, what do I need to get fixed?"

Holly, she was getting her nose done and her this done

and--you know, she wanted all this stuff done

and so he paid for it.

I've always been very honest about it.

I've had my boobs and my nose done.

I got to a point not too far into my time there--

I think I was only like six months in--

where I kind of broke under that pressure

and being made to feel like I needed to look

exactly like everybody else.

My hair was really long naturally,

and I was just like, "I'm gonna go chop my hair off

so I can at least look a little different."

♪ Happy birthday to you

I came back with short hair,

and he flipped out on me.

And he was screaming at me

and said it made me look old, hard, and cheap.

I remember when she cut her hair.

He was very unhappy about it.

Yeah, his world.

Hef would be pretty abrasive

in the way he said things to Holly.

She came down with red lipstick one time

and he like flipped out

and said he hated red lipstick on girls,

needed to take it off right away,

even though other people could wear red lipstick

and it didn't seem to bother him.

I could definitely see that she was getting depressed and sad

and her demeanor was starting to change.

I felt like I was just in this cycle of gross things,

and I didn't know what to do.

You know, over the years, I knew a lot of girlfriends.

You know who's there for Hef and who's there just because

they want a place to stay and a little money every week.

And, you know, you just get to a point

where you know who's who.

And what's funny with Holly,

she never let on if she was unhappy.

You're in a relationship with Hugh Hefner

inside the Playboy Mansion.

You signed up for that journey,

and you knew you signed up for that journey.

If you're not happy, pack up your stuff and go.

Like you could have walked out the door any time.

♪

His friends were always so supportive

and just speaking so highly of him.

But that's the only side of him they ever saw.

They had no idea what was going on behind closed doors

and how the women were treated.

When I lived at the Mansion, I was afraid to leave.

Something that was always lingering

in the back of my mind, I think,

since the very beginning was that if I left,

there was just this mountain of revenge porn

just waiting to come out.

When you would go out with Hef,

he's taking all kinds of naked pictures of these women

when we're wasted out of our minds.

And he would print out, like,

eight copies for him and all the women.

You would pass them around, and it's just gross.

I drank pretty heavily every night we went out.

It was my way of coping with the situation

after we got back home.

The other girlfriends would always try

and bring other girls home from nightclubs

and get other girls to come upstairs.

And I wasn't into that.

The drama between me and the other women became so bad.

Like, imagine having sex with somebody

in a room full of women who all hate you

and you know they're all talking about you.

And there was a point where I just felt really low.

Like, I didn't feel like I had any options.

♪

I remember there was a point in time a couple years in,

after we had gone out

and after we'd all been in the bedroom,

everybody's leaving and walking out,

and I was in the bathtub,

and I just wanted to drown myself.

♪

I just felt like I was in this cycle of misery.

And, you know, those feelings would never last long.

But you have those moments like,

"What did I gain from this experience?"

You know? I knew there would be something.

I always had that faith that there would be something

that would make it worth it.

These are so sexy. I love 'em.

Yeah, I think you got a lotta good stuff.

The first season of "Girls Next Door" came out in 2005,

and it wasn't a perfect experience by any means,

but it totally saved my life.

Come on, honey. Jump in.

"The Girls Next Door" happened at a time

when Playboy had lost its feet.

The Internet, celebrity culture,

all these things-- it was like an earthquake

and Hef was trying to figure out,

"Well, how do we stay relevant?"

Hef's documentarian friend

did all kinds of personality interviews with everybody,

including us three girls.

Here we go! Nice.

And someone at E! said, "That's my show.

I wanna see the Mansion

through the eyes of those three girls."

"The Girls Next Door" show did a lot

for the Playboy brand.

We knew there would be some interest

because it was the Playboy Mansion.

What I did not anticipate

was how hugely popular it would become

and particularly how hugely popular with young women.

♪

The show gave me confidence.

It gave me a sense of purpose.

The contrast between like the first 3 years I lived there

and like the last 3 1/2 years, it was--it was night and day.

I can see myself getting my self-esteem back.

I had a job at the Playboy Studio for the show,

and I ended up really loving it.

I seemed like I'm on my way to being a little more normal,

like a little more of a functional human.

It felt great to be able to make the show.

It really was a lot of fun.

I was excited when I finally got a chance

to be in the magazine.

But we weren't paid for the first order of episodes

for "The Girls Next Door."

They made it very clear to us

that if we didn't wanna do it,

there would be a million girls

that would wanna take our place.

Eventually, we did get paid.

But we were told one day that we needed to sign contracts

and we needed to sign them that day

or E! wasn't going to renew the show,

which I just didn't want to sign a contract

that, in essence, was signing a contract

to be in a relationship, since the show

was about three girls he was dating.

That felt very prostitute-ish to me.

I was in the shower, and all of a sudden,

Hef is standing there,

and he opens up the shower door,

and he's like, "Why aren't you signing this contract?!

I need you to sign this contract!"

So we all signed it.

But I consider that signing under duress.

I signed the contract, crying and soaking wet.

Mm-hmm.

I always find the perfect card.

"Still the one I love to catch myself dreaming about.

"Still the one I love to talk things over with.

Still the one--"

Huh? You don't want me to read it?

- No. - Oh--aw!

Oh, no, I was embarrassed and stressed.

Like, he's reading this card aloud that I got him,

and I just feel stupid

because, like, what even is this?

Like I'm supposed to be filming like this romantic scene,

but he's, like, dating other people.

The show was doing a lot for me both for my self-esteem

and just as far as other opportunities

that would come to be later.

But I wasn't really seeing that.

I still felt like I was very stuck in the same situation.

Hef was definitely very needy of Holly's time,

and he always wanted her next to him.

For instance, I remember we went to this event

on the "Queen Mary."

We were filming "Girls Next Door."

We got Hef to spend the night on the "Queen Mary,"

and we were so excited.

And we were gonna go run around the ship

in our pajamas, and so we were like,

"Oh, Holly, you have to come with us."

And he told her no, she couldn't go

and like grabbed her hair.

She was like leaning down, and he like pulled her hair

was like, "No. You're not going."

She needed to be there with him,

otherwise, he would have been alone in his room.

And that wouldn't have been okay with him.

♪

In 2008, my last year there, the other girls were leaving.

It looked like it was just going to be me.

I finally thought I had got

what I wanted out of this situation

and was finally like in this committed relationship.

But during that time period, he started

getting even meaner.

One day, I had all these messages from Holly

that her and Hef had an altercation

downstairs during dinner, and she got up to walk away

and he said, "Quit being such a bitch."

But not bitch. The C word. Which I hate that word.

So I don't even wanna say it. Sounds so ugly.

And that's it. She was done.

At that point, there were no women to pit me against.

There was none of that left.

And that's when I had the realization and I was like,

"Whoa, he's been the problem the whole time."

I had been locked into the mentality of the Mansion

and had felt like

there's no other future for me outside.

But I finally saw him for who he was,

and I had to go.

I just felt it so strongly that I had to leave.

♪

The time at Playboy really caused some damage.

I've had different types of therapy and stuff since I left.

Other than some of the animals in the zoo,

I can't really think of anything I miss.

When I decided to leave, it was pretty sudden.

So I wouldn't say it was so much that I had a plan.

I just had more to fall back on.

Like I'd been really careful with my money

and making investments

And I knew that there was at least a fan base

for "The Girls Next Door."

So maybe I could turn that into something.

And it worked out really well. I did my own TV show.

I'm out on my own in Las Vegas.

I star in a really awesome burlesque show

called "Peepshow" at Planet Hollywood,

had kids, got married,

basically did everything I wanted to do.

But every single day of my life,

I would have a stranger approach me

and ask, "How's Hef?"

And I would always say, "Oh, he's good. He's great."

I really started to feel terrible about it

and like I was living a lie.

And after my book came out,

no one ever came up to me again and asked how's Hef?

My book wasn't motivated by money at all.

It wasn't motivated by revenge.

I knew he was in a place

where he didn't really answer to anyone.

He wasn't necessarily cancelable, so to speak.

It was strictly for me

so I wouldn't feel bound to be living this lie

where I constantly have to say things were great

when I was there when they weren't.

What I love about my book

is I feel some people are finding it

and they read it and they recognize parallel situations

in emotionally abusive relationships

that they might be in.

I've heard a lot of feedback like that.

And I love it that people are talking about abuses of power

and imbalances in relationships.

And I hope that helps some people.

We are currently in an era

where we're breaking down that wall of misogyny.

Hef was able to control women

under the disguise of his money and power.

Yeah, for sure.

Holly Madison got money, got fame,

got everything she wanted.

So I'm worried that Holly will just cause a lot of eyerolling

and therefore people won't really take this seriously.

When Holly was his girlfriend,

he was old by then.

Hef was a lot younger when I started dating him.

My experiences with him got pretty scary at times.

We love you, Hef!

Didn't matter how many people you brought in--

it would only satisfy him for the moment

and then he'd have to find something bigger,

better, naughtier.

He was like a vampire.

He sucked the life out of all these young girls for decades.

If those rocks could talk, the tales they would tell.

I know some really deep dark secrets.

I can't give this up.

And now we're speaking up. It's all gonna come out.

I think everybody had that desire to be a Playboy Bunny.

There was a style

that the Playboy Bunnies had.

When you put on that costume,

you thought you were protected.

But Bunnies were easy prey.

Everything wasn't lights, camera, action, happy.

I think about those girls that were muffled, discarded.

There were many young women that were assaulted,

that were silenced.

That's how it worked with Playboy.

You open your mouth, you're outta here.