Holly Madison Describes Weird Group Sex and Cult-Like Atmosphere at Playboy Mansion

Former Playboy Bunny Holly Madison described group sex nights as weird and the Playboy Mansion atmosphere as cult-like during her time with Hugh Hefner.

On Kristin Cavallari's "Let's Be Honest" podcast, Madison said everyone fawned over Hefner. She explained that the group sex began with Playboy Bunnies taking turns having sex with him. "Then the girls who weren't active with him were kind of like acting like they were active with the other girls, but not really," she told Cavallari.

Madison added, "It would be like kind of silhouetted, because you'd have like these giant screens of porn going, and it would be just girls, like, talking s--- with each other. And it was a really weird scene and nobody liked it and everybody tried to just get it done as fast as possible."

When Madison started as a Playboy Bunny, she had to go out with Hefner and later have sex with him twice a week. That changed once production started on the reality series "The Girls Next Door." The girlfriends stopped the regular outings.

"We stopped, not that we wouldn't ever go out if it was like a special occasion, but we stopped those regular club nights where we're going out every Wednesday and Friday, because we were so busy with the show, and he loved the show," Madison said. "He was, like, high off the show. It gave him new relevance, like the ego boost."

"So, he didn't really feel the need to, like, ‘Oh, I have to do these compulsive sex nights to make myself feel wanted and relevant,’ I think," she continued.

Madison said the environment grew more competitive after the show began. Before, it was just her, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson, with a rotating cast of six others. "It was definitely coming mostly from Hef, also from the other girls," she said. "There was like a rotating cast of six other slots and nobody got along. It was super competitive."

She claimed Hefner enjoyed engineering drama between the women. "He liked to kind of play two different teams against each other, so he always felt fought over and he could always get his way, and we couldn't like, you know … unionize against him," Madison said.

"I was like, ‘Oh s---, he’s been like engineering this the whole time. F--- that,'" she added.

Madison said Hefner was accustomed to his cult-like following. People fawned over him "so they can, like, stay on the party list."

Madison joined Playboy in the early 2000s and moved into the Playboy Mansion around 2001. She was one of Hefner's main girlfriends from about 2001 to 2008 and appeared on "The Girls Next Door" (2005–2009), which showed life at the mansion. She left the show and the Playboy lifestyle in 2008.

Hefner, Playboy's founder, died in 2017 at age 91. He passed away at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles from natural causes.