Down the Rabbit Hole (43 page)

And just then bright security flashlights whizzed past us, leading Hef's entourage out of the club. Two Playmates—Jen and Kim—walked by us, looking truly embarrassed, and mouthed “sorry.” Next came an angry-looking Crystal, who avoided any eye contact with us, dragging a dazed and confused-looking Hef, who shuffled along behind her.

“What happened?” I asked the guard.

“I don't know,” he shrugged. “I just got the word they were leaving.”

It was so unlike Hef to miss even a short chance to be in front of cameras that I was actually concerned. He
lived
for that sort of attention. He didn't
look
unwell, but I asked the
Playboy
publicists about it anyway. They assured me that Hef was perfectly fine and his sudden departure had nothing to do with his health.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together: Crystal's neurotic behavior and canceled performance combined with being forced to participate in my reality show and Hef's overzealousness to see us . . . You do the math.

Oh well,
I thought. Hef loved any chance to be on TV and he loved
Girls Next Door
nostalgia. To me, though, it didn't matter whether we got the nightclub scene or not. If he didn't want to film it, it was his loss. Unlike Hef, I didn't enjoy living in the past. I was young and living for the present and future.

I couldn't help but think of Hef spending the better part of five seasons pounding into Bridget's, Kendra's, and my heads that
we
were replaceable—that the show would be just as successful in our absence. With
Kendra
and
Holly's World
pulling in solid ratings and being renewed for additional seasons and
GND
fading quietly into the night, it appeared we weren't so “replaceable” after all.

C
HAPTER
16

“I do hope it's my dream and not the Red King's! I don't like belonging to another person's dream!”

—Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking-Glass

E
ven the most magical fairy tale isn't complete without a villain—and one was about to arrive in
Holly's World
.

E! was thrilled with the performance of the first season of
Holly's World
and promptly ordered a second season. To satiate the viewer demand, the network scheduled production to begin in fall 2010 in order to meet a January 2011 premiere date (in the television industry, fall and winter premieres are reserved for the more established shows, while summer premieres tend to be for untested programming). The shift forward was a huge move for our little-reality-show-that-could!

Unfortunately, not every E! show saw such great success. Earlier that year, Hef had delivered a pilot to E! titled
The Bunny House
that he hoped would be the second coming of
The Girls Next Door
and keep Playboy—and himself—on air.

The show followed the exploits of five Playboy Playmates as they lived in a plush pad across the street from the mansion: Claire Sinclair, Hope Dworaczyk, Crystal McCahill, Jaime Edmondson, and Jayde Nicole.

Claire (the Barbi Benton doppelgänger) and I had become friends. Not only was she beautiful and sweet, she actually had a brain in her head. I had met Hope and Crystal during the Anniversary Playmate search a few years earlier, while Jaime was new to the mansion fold. She had an interesting history: she'd been everything from an NFL cheerleader to a police officer to a contestant on CBS's
The Amazing Race
.

Then there was 2008's Playmate of the Year and the show's official mean girl, Jayde. The ex-girlfriend of reality star Brody Jenner, she had already spent some time in front of cameras during the final season of MTV's
The Hills
.

In the wake of her breakup, Jayde had been trying to shop around her own pilot with no luck, but the network loved the idea of a “girl you love to hate” character, so when producers got wind of that, they placed her in
The Bunny House
as the resident shit stirrer.

The pilot followed a re-creation of Claire's Playmate test shoot at Studio West—with Crystal seated purposefully in my former perch viewing the instantly uploaded images on a computer monitor and shouting words of encouragement, as I used to do when I directed the shoots—and a group trip to Las Vegas for Hope's Playmate of the Year celebration. But between
Kendra
and
Holly's World,
there was just too much
Playboy
-produced content on E! and the pilot wasn't picked up to series.

However, there were those who remained obsessed with the idea of resurrecting
Girls Next Door,
so Claire and Jayde were planted on
Holly's World
in hopes that their characters would gain enough popularity among viewers that E! would be forced to revisit
The Bunny House
concept.

I had virtually no choice in the matter, but I wasn't particularly bothered by it at first. Producers insisted that, per E!, the show needed more drama and Jayde had signed on to the show, knowing she was going to play the “bad girl.” Honestly, that made my job much easier; I was happy to let her be the drama queen. Unlike
Girls Next Door
(where “negativity” was forbidden), most reality shows require some dramatic elements . . . how can you have an interesting story without conflict? Oftentimes, producers will guide the storylines, encourage talent to make provocative statements, and edit things together to increase the overall tension on the series. If producers had a predetermined villain, then we wouldn't need to manufacture trouble between the existing cast—who at the time were my closest friends. Plus, I didn't feel threatened. I was sure E! would never order
The Bunny House.

As for Claire, she was a natural fit for
Holly's World,
not because of her
Playboy
connection, but because she was a budding Vegas showgirl herself who had just signed on for a guest run at MGM's
Crazy Horse Paris
revue.

While we took a break from filming during the holidays, Hef and Crystal had become engaged. Right on cue, the media firestorm began citing that I was reportedly “devastated” upon hearing the news. Actually, I was probably one of the few people in the world not at all surprised that Hef was getting remarried. Hef's youngest son, Cooper, turned 18 that year, providing Hef the green light he felt he needed to divorce Kimberley (despite the fact they had already been separated for nearly 13 years), plus with
Girls Next Door
no longer on the air, Hef needed an incentive to once again reinvent himself and garner headlines.

I understand why people thought I would be upset. For five seasons it appeared as though I wanted nothing more than Hef to myself, a big white wedding, and the mansion hallways echoing with pitter-patter of tiny feet. In the media, our breakup played out as if I was unable to tame the ultimate bachelor only to have him propose to the next blonde that shoved her way into the mansion. The truth was: I couldn't have cared less. The happier Hef was without me, the more quickly I could disassociate myself. It could have easily been me walking down that aisle and I was grateful to have gotten the hell out of there!

Long after I left, a friend of Hef's confided to me that Hef kept saying that he had “no idea” why I chose to leave.

“All you had to do was stick around until Cooper turned 18,” he said with a pointed look.

“But I don't care anymore! That's not what I want,” I responded. So few people seemed to realize that I had woken up from the spell I had been under a long time ago.

The few years I had been out of the mansion had been the best of my life so far—if I had married Hef, I wouldn't have had any of that. My life would have been over.

“D
ON
'
T YOU MISS THE
maaaaaaansion?” a dreamy-eyed girl asked me during one of my
Peepshow
meet-and-greets. I would often get this question and it continued to amaze me how many women were cast under this
Playboy
spell. There I was headlining on the Vegas Strip, making millions of dollars a year all on my own and starring in my own television show . . . and they wondered if I missed living by an archaic set of rules with a spoiled man old enough to be my grandfather. Were they crazy?!

After hearing this over and over again, I began to realize that what viewers took away from
The Girls Next Door
was nothing like what life there was
really
like.

When it was suggested we film an episode of
Holly's World
at the mansion so I could congratulate Hef on his engagement, I actually jumped at the chance! This was my opportunity to show viewers that I wasn't at all “devastated” by Hef's engagement; in fact, I was happy that he was moving on and wished him well! Regardless of how I felt about Crystal, I never for a moment wanted to trade places with her. I thought it was important for people to know that.

It was an eerily quiet day at the mansion when I arrived to film my “congratulations” scene with Hef. An extra-large dollhouse occupied the great hall—a gift I had commissioned for Hef shortly before I left. The piece was an exact replica of the home he had grown up in in Chicago in the early part of the last century.

When Hef arrived to shoot the scene, he spent a lot of time fussing over the dollhouse. Eventually, Crystal made her way downstairs in a cozy-looking long-sleeved shirt. I congratulated her as well. She seemed different to me that day: calm and friendly, low-key, as if there wasn't a negative bone in her body.

Maybe she's finally growing into herself,
I thought. It was nice to see that side of Crystal.
Perhaps I had judged her too harshly. Maybe they'll actually be good for each other, after all.

I returned to Vegas that night and went back to finishing season two of
Holly's World.
The second season was even more memorable than the first. The producers found a couple of private investigators to track down Josh's birth mother (whom he had never met and knew nothing about). When Josh and Angel went to Charleston, Josh's hometown, everyone thought we were at the start of a long quest to find his real mother. No one actually expected her to turn up right away! The investigators came through and the episode turned out to be one of the most genuinely surprising and emotional ones of the series.

I let Angel go as my assistant and gave her the role of my understudy in
Peepshow
. She also landed a small role in another Strip production due to an audition that was planned and filmed for the show. Laura was mostly prompted by producers to hang out with Jayde so that our resident villain had an excuse to be intertwined into our storylines.

Though the show was better than ever, I found myself growing more and more distant from my closest friends. With my crazy work schedule, Josh was really the only person from the show that I regularly saw off camera—and that was only because we were in
Peepshow
together. It was clear that if there was a season three, Laura wasn't necessarily going to get invited back due to her failure to connect with the audience. I wondered if she would choose to stay in Vegas if that were the case.

Meanwhile, Angel, who was loved on the show, was growing more and more distant from me. I rarely saw her anymore and she seemed to make a point of hanging out with anyone
but
me, Josh, or Laura. She spent most of her time at her mom's home, leaving her and Roman's things in each of their rooms at my house. I began to sense something was wrong. Her attitude changed, too. She'd come a long way professionally since joining the
Holly's World
cast and I thought I had helped her get so many things that she wanted, but maybe those were just things
I
would have wanted at her age. Obviously something was a bad fit, because she didn't seem happy anymore. The carefree, fun-loving Angel who used to light up my days was gone.

While my cast was handling their newfound places in the spotlight in different ways, I kept busy with work and foolishly pushed my concern about my friends aside.
We'll deal with that when next season's negotiations come up,
I thought. The future seemed so bright that I was sure everything would just repair itself eventually.

Claire was the front-runner for 2011's Playmate of the Year and it was suggested that since she and I had become so close, I resurrect my role as
Playboy
's photo editor for the pictorial as a special contributor. Despite how desperate I was to get away from
Playboy,
I actually liked this idea since it put the spotlight on my professional, not personal, involvement with the magazine.

Given her very era-specific look and curves, I began planning the shoot in my head: a vintage Bettie Page–inspired feature using the plush red
Crazy Horse
theater as a backdrop. We couldn't wait to get started!