Holly Madison says the reality TV conflict that once defined her image on “The Girls Next Door” wasn’t the harmless kind of drama she’d sign up for today — and she says the fallout from it still lingers among her former castmates.
Madison, who is returning to Las Vegas this month as an ambassador for the 16th annual Grant a Gift Gala, told Fox News Digital she would now embrace scripted-style conflict on a show, but only if everyone involved knew it was staged.
“I would do manufactured drama if I was in on the joke. I always say that to Bridgette watching ‘Girls Next Door,’ I’m like, if we knew what the drama was and the three of us were gonna play it out on screen and not take it home with us, so to speak, when the cameras are done rolling, that would have been so much more fun to me than being manipulated from the puppet masters above.”
She added that the aftereffects haven’t fully faded. “Some of us from the cast are still not speaking today because of things like that, so. I would actually do manufactured drama, 100%. I would throw down on like a ‘Real Housewives of Las Vegas.’ I just don’t want to be puppeted again,” she said.
Madison also pointed to a shift in how audiences watch reality TV now compared with during her years on “The Girls Next Door.” “Editing’s crazy,” she said. “But I also appreciate that viewers are a little more sophisticated now. I mean, back in the ‘Girls Next Door’ days, they could edit something to be not what it was. And everybody watching was like, ‘Nope, that’s your character. That’s who you are.'”
One line she won’t cross: putting her own children on camera. “I would never put my kids on TV, ever, ever, ever,” she said. Madison shares a daughter, Rainbow, and a son, Forest, with ex-husband Pasquale Rotella. She said her children know only pieces of her Playboy past and treat it lightly. “So it’s all kind of vague, and they don’t see it as like a bad thing. Like anytime it’s brought up or mentioned, it’s kind of laughed about,” she said. “So I’m glad that whoever’s bringing it to their attention or bringing it up — because it’s not me or their dad — whoever’s bringing it up is bringing it up like it’s a positive or a cool thing or a funny thing. It’s not like bad or shameful or gross or anything.”
A new lens on her past
Madison rose to fame at the Playboy Mansion alongside Hugh Hefner before relocating to Las Vegas, where she headlined the stage show “Peepshow” and starred in her own reality series, “Holly’s World.” Her 2015 memoir, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list.
She was formally diagnosed with autism in 2023, after suspecting for years she might be on the spectrum. The diagnosis, she said, has reshaped how she understands decisions she made and relationships that puzzled her at the time.
“I understand some of the people I would gravitate to and some of decisions I made differently,” she said. “I always felt like not being able to connect with other people and not being able to connect with boys my age was some kind of like mystical fated thing. Like I’m just not meant to do this.”
She said she now recognizes why certain social situations felt impossible to navigate. “Sometimes I would look back and think, ‘Oh, that person hated me and I could never figure it out.’ And now I’m like — I kind of get it,” she said. “I think they were taking some of my mannerisms and some of [the] ways of communication the wrong way. So, it’s just really opened everything up for me.”
Madison said the diagnosis also clarified why she thrived in her role working with incoming Playmates at the Playboy studio, where giving tours and asking structured questions suited her better than open-ended social settings. “So I can definitely see why I was thriving where I was thriving and why I was failing where I was failing,” she said.
Supporting Las Vegas families
That personal experience has drawn Madison to Grant a Gift Autism Foundation, a Southern Nevada nonprofit serving individuals with autism and their families. She returns as an Event Ambassador for the organization’s 16th annual gala, supporting Grant a Gift Autism Foundation and the Ackerman Center, on Oct. 22 in Las Vegas.
“It’s so helpful, you know, to give them some steps and some therapies and some things the kids can do,” Madison said. “And it’s also important to remember that autism is such a spectrum. You know, there are families who are really struggling with kids that need a lot of support. So, I love being a part of that and being able to help with that.”
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