A former Playboy mansion bunny has reflected on her time with Hugh Hefner and revealed the difficulties of living that ‘fast lane’ life.

Holly Madison shot to fame in the 2000s and became known as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, alongside two other Playboy bunnies.

The former Playboy magazine cover model became a star on the reality TV show The Girls Next Door and has now opened up about what the experience was really like.

She now hosts a podcast alongside another one of Hefner’s ex-girlfriends Bridget Marquardt and the pair remain close to this day despite different experiences in the house.

Holly spoke about the difficulties of living life that life and reflected on the negative impact it had on her.

Holly (right) shot to fame in the 2000s and became recognized as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends (M. Tran/FilmMagic)

Speaking to the Mail Online, she said: “When you’re involved in a world where you’re highly sexualized or sexualizing yourself, and there’s a lot of things at stake and things you could possibly gain, like fame, money, opportunities, there’s people around you who are jealous of those things. It’s truly living life in the fast lane.”

She added that it took her years to truly open up about her experiences in the mansion and noted that she would often try to be positive anytime someone asked her about her time there.

She claimed it was an ‘easy way to dismiss everything, and tie my experiences up in a nice little bow’.

But in all honesty, she knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful about her experiences.

In her 2015 memoir, as well as in her podcast, she claimed that the late Hefner was ‘controlling’ through their relationship and has remarked at how ‘miserable’ she was overall with the experience.

Holly has spoken out about a miserable time in a relationship with Hefner (Michael Bezjian/WireImage)

Over the years, this has resulted in some pushback from some former Playboy bunnies due to it differing from their own experiences with Hefner and the mansion.

However, Holly has explained that she has previously noticed a level of discomfort in some of the other ex-girlfriends of Hefner and concluded they too were trying to make the best of their situation.

Speaking about them she said she could ‘tell something was a little wrong, even though they were trying to have a great experience’.

She added: “I could always see that there was a little bit of sadness behind their eyes, or they seemed a little upset, and I never really knew why, but I always kind of had a suspicion that maybe they had a similar experience to me.”

Two former Playboy models reflected on the moment when they decided to leave their life at the Playboy Mansion behind.

Models Karissa and Kristina Shannon, 35, were shot into the world of glitz and glamour when they moved into the Playboy Mansion at 19-years-old, with the twin sisters later becoming Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends.

The twins were later featured on the final two seasons of Girls Next Door, which focused on the lives of the magazine founder’s girlfriends, Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt.

“We shot those and we overnighted them and literally got a call the next day,” Kristina told People Magazine in an exclusive interview.

“They were like, ‘We want to set you girls up for a test shoot in Miami.’ And we were like, ‘Holy cow.’ “

However, life in the Playboy Mansion wasn’t all it cracked up to be, with the experience being ‘traumatic’ for the two women.

Karissa and Kristina Shannon are ex-Playboy models (Charley Gallay/WireImage)

Calling it a ‘culture shock’, Kristina said: “We were literally just teenagers. We were all natural. We didn’t have fake teeth. We didn’t have fake boobs like the other girls or fake hair. We just walked around with natural faces over tan because we were always in the sun in Florida.”

They claimed they were subject to ‘jealousy’ from other girls due to the ‘special attention’ on them from Hefner, and eventually their religious beliefs became a ‘big problem’, with Karissa adding: “We had no family that was there to back us up like a lot of the girls.”

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The sisters left the mansion in 2010, and in the years following, they went through a number of hardships, including the death of their grandmother and Kristina’s DUI in 2014 – leading some to compare them to past Playmate, Anna Nicole Smith.

Kristina said: “Everyone was saying we were going through our ‘Anna Nicole [Smith] phase. We gained weight. There was alcohol and pills.

“We were really unhealthy and lost and, even at points, suicidal. We had no one. It was just us, trying to figure it out after losing ourselves.”

The pair said that their experience in the Playboy Mansion proved to be traumatic (David Livingston/Getty Images)

Smith rose as a popular Playmate in the 90s and early 2000’s, however, her life would tragically be cut short in 2007, when she died at the age of 37 due to combined drug intoxication.

Karissa and Kristian also noted that they’d both come to the conclusion that they couldn’t keep this up for the long-term, with Karissa adding: “Kristina and I decided to move. We didn’t know where to go, so we decided to go back to where we were born and leave L.A.

“We sold the beauty salon we owned at the time, and said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here and live a simple life. Let’s just start healing.”

Kendra Wilkinson has revealed why she ‘never bonded’ with Holly Madison while in a ‘throuple’ with Hugh Hefner.

Despite banking five years living in Hefner’s infamous Playboy Mansion as one of the late 91-year-old’s girlfriends, Wilkinson said she often felt like the ‘third wheel’, particularly with co-girlfriends Madison and Bridged Marquardt.

While many of Hefner’s so-called bunnies and Playmates have spoken out about their experiences in the infamous house, with accusations about Hefner’s conduct coming under scrutiny since his death in 2017, The Girls Next Door star described her time in the house as ‘heavenly’.

During an appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast, she said: “All I did was work out and eat, work out, eat. I would be like preparing for the next party or something, ‘What am I going to wear’. That took a week out of the time.

Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, and Holly Madison in 2007 (Noel Vasquez/Getty Images)

“What else? It was just like heaven. It was a heavenly experience for me. Like there couldn’t have been a better experience.”

However, that’s not to say there wasn’t any down sides, notably claiming sex with Hefner was ‘lame’ as well as her apparent relationship with Madison, now 45, and Marquardt, now 51, that failed to blossom into friendships.

“That’s the part that was hard,” she said on the podcast. “I wasn’t really a ‘girl’s girl’ at that point in life. I was more of a ‘guy’s girl’, so we never really bonded.”

The now-mom-of-two first moved into the lavish LA mansion when she was 18, but said she felt like an outsider around Madison and Marquardt while they filmed the show.

Wilkinson said she struggled to bond with Hefner’s girlfriends (David Livingston/Getty Images)

“I just decided to go with that during the show process,” she explained. “‘Well, I’m just gonna be me and see how this works, rather than try to fit in.’ I felt like I was a complete odd man out [in that] whole situation.”

The comments come as Madison recently said she was keen to make amends to rebuild their friendship, telling US Weekly: “It would be nice to be on good terms for sure, but I really don’t know where she’s at.

“I look back at our relationship and what went wrong and I see a lot of fault with executive producers who [were] working on her show and my show after we left.”

She went on to say a ‘lot of drama’ kicked off around that time, adding that she isn’t sure if Wilkinson even ‘knows what our original falling out was all about’.

Madison said she would like to reconcile with her former co-star (David Klein/Getty Images)

Madison also recently revealed she had a bit of a tough time in the house as Hefner’s ‘number one girlfriend’ in the 2000s, too.

Speaking on the In Your Dreams Podcast with Owen Thiele, Madison explained what it was like sharing Hefner with Wilkinson and Marquardt.

And while she said the sex was ‘normal,’ despite the 50-year age difference, there was one thing she hated doing.

“Well, it’s a very different story between when we were just by ourselves than with everybody else in the room,” she explained. “Everybody else in the room, no. That was disgusting. I hated it. I made it very known I hated it.

“If it was just me and him, it was a lot more normal than you would think.”

Holly Madison has shared a pretty harrowing reason why Hugh Hefner didn’t want any Playboy models wearing red lipstick.

Madison, an American television personality, is best known as a former girlfriend of the late Hefner after dating the Playboy founder for seven years until they parted ways in 2008.

The Girls Next Door star, 43, has since opened up on some of her experiences at the infamous Playboy mansion after she first moved in back in 2001.

Chad Buchanan / Contributor / Getty Images

Speaking on a recent episode of the Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe podcast, Madison revealed Hefner’s strict rules when it came to the women living in the mansion.

Talking about Hef’s ‘control tactic’ surrounding his aversion to a bit of rouge lippy, Madison explained: “I think it was a control tactic, but also, when I was brand new, I wore red lipstick out a couple of times, and he didn’t say anything about it, because when you were the new girl in the group, you were always treated well.”

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Madison went on to share a particular phrase she had previously heard: “Somebody said, like, the higher up you are in a cult the worse you’re treated because they want the new people to bond and feel into it.”

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But, after half a year of Madison living at the Playboy residence – everything began to change.

“It wasn’t a big deal until, like, six months into it, when I was living in his bedroom and I was the main girlfriend,” she continued. “That he felt like he had the leeway to yell at me over it.”

Madison then opened up on her theories to why Hefner was so controlling over his girlfriends’ makeup choice.

“I think he didn’t love it,” she said. “Because when he invented the concept of a playmate in the ’50s, he wanted the women to look very young and fresh-faced because he felt like the look in the ‘50s at the time was very – he described it as ‘somebody’s older sister’.”

Explaining a little more behind Hef’s reasoning, Madison went on: “It was more sophisticated, fashion model, red lipstick.

“It was a lot of fabric and big skirts and everything, and he hated that.”

Instead, Madison claimed: “He wanted skimpy and fresh-faced and very young looking.”

And if you thought that was creepy – wait for this.

For Hef, Madison revealed, bold makeup was reserved for ‘older mature women’ which was certainly not his type because ‘it wasn’t, like, the barely legal thing anymore’.