Down the Rabbit Hole (23 page)

All these years at the mansion being made to feel ugly and less than—and he had marked me as an A all along!

Hef had already shuffled back down the hall.

“I can't believe I got an A!” I said to Jenny, Hef's social secretary, genuinely in shock. Hef always treated me like such a scrub, like I was barely lucky enough to be in residence at the mansion.

“Well, of course you did,” Jenny said, matter-of-factly. “What did you think you would have gotten?”

W
HILE
I
KNEW THAT
people were curious about the world inside the Playboy gates, I found it hard to imagine how we would fill an entire season. Relative to scripted shows, reality television is inexpensive to make (which is the reason so many of them litter the airwaves). I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but in order to get the most for their time and money, producers typically map out episodes in advance based on schedules and then determine what could make for potential plotlines. While our crew initially filmed us at all hours hoping for some of that legendary Playboy spontaneity, they eventually learned that mansion life didn't quite live up to the hype after countless hours (and probably thousands of wasted crew dollars) were spent filming the most mundane moments of our lives.

Finding interesting things for us to do proved more difficult than anticipated. Contrary to popular belief, I couldn't just tote a film crew with me around town. Producers had to get permission from every store, restaurant, beach, and salon in Los Angeles we wanted to film at. Everything requires some sort of preapproval.

And what the hell would this season even be about?

Soon I realized Hef had a plan.

The second episode focused on two prospective Playmates that were staying in the mansion's guesthouse. After having dinner out at Geisha House in Hollywood (where Hef had his own fried chicken meal brought in and prepared by the mansion staff, as usual), Hef called Bridget, Kendra, and me into his room to “talk to us.”

“I can't promise it, but you're going to shoot a cover and I'm going to put you in the magazine,” Hef said. It was in many ways a defining moment in my life. After four years living there, I was finally going to fulfill my long-held dream of being in
Playboy
magazine. And he just said it. The words fell off his tongue like the most ordinary of small talk while standing crunched into the corner of his bedroom entry surrounded by a handful of crew members.

It was so unceremonious a delivery that we needed a moment to process the news. We were utterly blown away. Kendra's mouth dropped to the floor and she appeared catatonic for a good 60 seconds. I screamed so loudly I was certain the dog I was holding had gone deaf, and Bridget looked as though she was going to burst into tears. This man—who had conditioned us to believe we were good enough for his bed but not his magazine—just made our dreams come true. It was well within his power all along, but he was finally saying we were worthy. It was validating and exciting all at the same time.

Still, we were extremely skeptical—particularly Bridget and me. We had been at the mansion for years and had been browbeaten to believe we just weren't
Playboy
material.

In the episode, Bridget revealed through a stream of tears that she had auditioned to be a centerfold years earlier but didn't make the cut. Hef had basically told her it was never going to happen.

“I'll believe it when I see it,” Bridget said through a forced smile during her one-on-one interview. It was a small window into what was really going on inside Bridget's and my heads.

Earlier in that same episode, you heard me rattle off the same canned answer I'd given for years about whether I wanted to be in
Playboy
.

“People assume that I came here wanting to be a Playmate and that that's my goal,” I said. “The choice is extremely clear to me. I would much rather be Hef's girlfriend. Hef and I are so much in love. That's not even a comparison to me.”

But just because I valued being Hef's girlfriend didn't mean I still wasn't dying for a pictorial! In fact, the two things had become intertwined in my mind. Since the '50s, all of Hef's main girlfriends had appeared inside or on the cover of
Playboy—
except for me. And by this point, it was humiliating. People would always ask me why I wasn't featured in the magazine and I felt the need to make excuses for it by convincing people that somehow I was special because I
wasn't
. Hef was keeping me for himself, I would explain. What else was I supposed to say? My boyfriend thinks I'm ugly?

My shock and joy was genuine when Hef revealed that we would be shooting for the magazine. None of us expected it, so the reactions the cameras caught were absolutely sincere.

I'll give the man this: he knew what made for good TV.

He also knew the importance of good timing. By allowing us to appear in the magazine, Hef would be cashing in the biggest insurance policy he had to keep us safely behind the mansion bars. But Hef knew something we hadn't yet figured out: the show was positioned to be a runaway hit for the network, so he no longer needed the magazine as a guarantee. He had better bait: fame.

The debut season's arc revolved around our feature and possible cover. It wasn't until about halfway through season one that shooting began for the pictorial.

Hef allowed us to choose between the two staff photographers for our pictorial: Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda. For years, I had seen countless
Playboy
photo shoots come through Mary's office and I had absorbed every detail from conception to execution, from the first click of the camera to the ink on paper. I was so excited to finally be a part of that process myself. You would think that dating the magazine's editor in chief would have afforded me a sort of security and confidence before shooting the pictorial, but it was the total opposite. We couldn't have been any more anxious about the ordeal. We were
way
more nervous than just some random girl plucked from obscurity and thrown into a shoot. We had firsthand knowledge of just how fickle and critical Hef could be and we were petrified that we would somehow screw it up and he would just scrap the entire pictorial. After talking to a handful of Playmates, I decided we should go with Arny. While Stephen is an extremely talented photographer, he worked best with more experienced models who knew how to move in front of the camera. Arny worked best with rookie models; those straight-off-the-farm girls who needed help posing every inch of their body. When you haven't done much of it, modeling can be quite a clumsy sport. Kendra, Bridget, and I needed help squeezing our three bodies into an 8.5" × 11" frame—while looking as amazing as possible.

The day of our first shoot I was absolutely ecstatic. We were told to arrive to the mansion's bathhouse in the morning for hair and makeup wearing nothing but a robe and slippers (tight clothes and shoes would leave lines on the body—and we couldn't have that!). I couldn't believe I was finally getting the full
Playboy
beauty treatment. For years I had watched girls transform into these glamorous creatures with the help of the expert editorial beauty team. Even with my weekly allowance, I would have never been able to afford the beauty team
Playboy
magazine used. In the early days of Hef's seven girlfriends, it was standard practice for the girls to call in the
Playboy
glam squad before evenings out and large parties. By the time I arrived on the scene, these were the kinds of lavish expenses that Hef had cut back on. Sure, we would occasionally head to the salon before a red carpet event, but we had never yet experienced the crème de la crème. The Playboy glam squad was legendary. It comprised some of the best artists in the industry—and they didn't come cheap.

The ultra-talented Kimberly Ex did my hair and makeup: full, barrel-curled platinum locks with a bronzed face, defined cheekbones, thick black eyeliner, and carefully drawn lips. From the neck down, we were expected to be in top physical shape. The only help we were given in that area was some baby oil mixed with bronzing lotion to give our skin a smooth sheen. I was over the moon with my reflection. I mean, I actually
looked
like the girls on the pages of
Playboy
! First, we shot a series of clothed setup shots, which included a shot of the three of us hula hooping on the great lawn in bathing suits. It was mostly intended to warm us up before diving into the deep end (naked), but they ended up coming out great and one of the shots was published. The next setup had us in sexy cocktail attire standing in front of Hef's limo in the mansion's main driveway. After a few minutes of shooting, Hef appeared on set to join us for a few snaps.

How cute,
I thought,
he wants some behind-the-scenes shots of our shoot for his scrapbook.

Finally, it was time to begin shooting our nudes. By that point we'd each become considerably more relaxed in front of the camera. As Arny positioned each of us along the rocks in the mansion's infamous grotto, we were all laughing and goofing around. It was easily the best time the three of us had had together in what felt like months. When Hef came out to check on the photos, he was so happy with the results that he added a last-minute setup for the three of us in the bathhouse shower. It was already pretty late in the day—the shoot had gone longer than intended—but I couldn't get enough. The crew began setting up a final shot, but Bridget was scheduled for school. She had a final exam for one of her classes that she couldn't get out of. Apparently her professor didn't qualify shooting a
Playboy
pictorial as an acceptable reason to miss class. After a few minutes debating whether or not she should just skip (which would have resulted in a failing grade), Bridget dashed off to campus for her test.

Truthfully, it didn't feel odd shooting without her. I knew they wanted a lot of content to choose from and we still had the rest of the week to finish our pictorial. As far as any of us knew a “Bridget/Kendra” or a “Holly/Bridget” setup could have been on the books for the following day. Plus, shooting with just two girls was much easier than trying to arrange three. With wet hair and perfect makeup, Kendra and I playfully lathered each other up with sponges and bubbles in the tropical rock shower. Because it was one of the easiest sequences, it resulted in some of the sexiest shots of the entire pictorial.

The following day was hands down my favorite. The photographer and crew buzzed around the mansion's second floor preparing for our individual photos. Set in each of our bedrooms, the shoots were designed to showcase our unique personalities, which was refreshing. To reflect Bridget's sweet and playful demeanor, her pictorial featured her swathed in a delicate see-through negligée surrounded by plush pillows in her pink-on-pink-striped room. Kendra looked absolutely amazing in a scrap piece of football jersey with knee-high athletic socks and straddling a bunny head chair in her messy room (which was tidied up substantially). My shoot was in Hef's bedroom and was intended to be reminiscent of old Hollywood. The beauty team styled me like a '40s movie star (minus the red lipstick) and the photographer draped me over an elegant wood staircase wearing nothing but a pair of vintage peach marabou bedroom mules. It was the most beautiful I had ever felt. Like giddy schoolgirls, we snuck into each other's rooms to get a peek of one another's shoot. Each setup was unique and tailored to our personalities, so there was no competition and we were genuinely excited for each other.

Stepping into the Playboy Studio in Santa Monica for our final shoot was surreal. It was the very same studio I had nervously visited with my old friend Heather years earlier. We had decided to try a
Playboy
Polaroid audition, praying that we would be selected. My life had come full circle, in a way. While the journey wasn't quite how I imagined it, I was arriving at the studio to shoot a cover for the magazine.

Surveying the massive studio space, I immediately noticed that the crew had constructed an exact replica of Hef's bedroom for our set.

“Why didn't we just shoot at the mansion?” I asked one of the crew members, totally bewildered. He couldn't produce an answer. No one could. I suppose Hef was more inclined to waste thousands of magazine dollars rebuilding his bedroom rather than being inconvenienced for a few hours.

Playboy
photo editor Marilyn Grabowski used a page from a foreign issue of
Playboy
as inspiration for our first setup: three identical brunettes piled on top of each other in bed. Throughout the sequence, we couldn't keep a straight face. Since none of us were ever remotely attracted to one another, it never even crossed our minds to “act sexy.” Posing for such a risqué shot felt incredibly awkward, but it turned out that the laughter worked in our favor because the photos ended up looking quite erotic.

Finally
it was time to shoot our cover. Marilyn positioned each of us on a slightly slanted bed covered in silk sheets (that she constantly kept smoothing, draping, and switching), while Arny positioned himself on scaffolding directly above us. Because we were nude and flat on our backs, our breasts had to be taped up to produce the amount of cleavage needed for the cover. Contrary to the quick sequence audiences saw, the cover shoot lasted several days. Our hyper-meticulous,
Devil Wears Prada–
esque photo editor kept analyzing every excruciating detail down to the placement of a single curl. She must have changed the silk sheets from black to white to black again a hundred times—sending the photographer into a tailspin. Despite all of it, I was having the time of my life. The white, skylight-lit studio pulsated with creativity energy and positivity. It was such a welcome change from the musty atmosphere of the mansion.

“I wish I could come here every day,” I whispered to Bridget as we lay on the slanted bed.