Telling all! Holly Madison chatted with Life & Style about the 20th anniversary of The Girls Next Door and where she stands with costars Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson today.
“Bridget and I have been close, close friends since we very first met,” said Holly, 45, who returns for a new season of Investigation Discovery’s The Playboy Murders, premiering May 5 at 9 p.m. “Our relationship has been very consistent.”
Sadly, the same can’t be said for her bond with Kendra, 39.
“Kendra, I don’t speak to anymore,” Holly confessed. “We were kind of driven apart during the spinoff era, when she was doing her spinoff [Kendra] and I was doing mine [Holly’s World]. Everything was produced by the same executive producer and sometimes, a lot of the reality drama, even off-screen, really gets in the way.”
Holly’s book, Down the Rabbit Hole, which was released in 2015, gave the public an inside look at her life in the Playboy Mansion and with the late Hugh Hefner. However, things soured between the former costars after Kendra sided with Hugh when he seemingly accused Holly of “rewriting history” with her memoir.
“Over the course of my life I’ve had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women,” Hugh told Us Weekly at the time. “Many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives, and I’m pleased to say, remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight. I guess, as the old saying goes: You can’t win ’em all!”
Holly described Kendra as the “fakest person she’s ever met” in her book and later denied that the two were ever really friends.
“At the end of the day, what we did was we just f–ked the same man. That’s not friends,” Holly told E! News.
It didn’t take long for Kendra to fire back and she claimed that Holly always had an agenda during her time in the Playboy Mansion.
“My perception was that she acted like a First Lady,” Kendra told People in an article published on June 23, 2015. “You know, she had to play a part, play a role every day being there. Like, ‘I have to be this in order to get this.’ How could [Holly] want kids and [to] get married to him and then, next thing you know, say these types of things about Hef? It’s just out of revenge, and I feel bad for Hef. But you know what? He’s an amazing human being.”
The former Kendra on Top star continued, “Holly, you can tell, had this ulterior motive every minute being at the Mansion, and that motive was – it was clear as day – she wanted Hef’s kids, she wanted a piece of Playboy and she wanted to marry Hef for, obviously, his will.”
In 2023, Kendra was asked if she would ever be interested in reuniting with Holly and Bridget, 51, if they invited her on their podcast, “Girls Next Level,” but she quickly stuck a pin in the idea.
“I’ve already done the healing,” she told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on May 23, 2023. “I don’t need to go on a podcast and do more healing. I’ve already done it for myself.”
