Down the Rabbit Hole (24 page)

“I know, me too,” she said.

During our lunch break, Stephanie Morris—a junior photo editor at that time—called us down to her office to fill out “paperwork.”

Hef hadn't spoken to us about how much we were to be paid for our pictorial, but we were about to find out. Rates for amateur models start at about $25,000 per pictorial. In 2005, reality-star types were earning roughly $40,000 to $50,000 for a pictorial. Hef's former girlfriends the Bentley twins each received $100,000 for their cover and pictorial years earlier. When it came to actual celebrities (like Denise Richards, Drew Barrymore, or Cindy Crawford, for example), paydays could be near a million dollars.

Truthfully, Hef had been so stingy with opportunities for the girlfriends to appear in the magazine that I wasn't expecting much. At that point, I was just grateful for the chance. For years the mansion was hell because girls were fighting over this very opportunity—and here I was. Not them.

When we got to her office, I quickly scanned over the release she pushed under my nose. I didn't think much of it until I noticed the $25,000 fee we were each being paid for our pictorial. Since this was technically considered a “celebrity pictorial,” part of me thought we deserved more than the stock fee. Even something like $30,000? Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the dollar figure that upset me, it was that we were viewed as no greater a commodity than any other girl who had walked these halls. We were simply a dime a dozen.

Still, $25,000 was the most money I'd ever had! I immediately started planning what I would do with it. I knew I wanted to put some in savings for the investment property I dreamed of buying—and maybe I could use a bit to buy that Louis Vuitton travel case that I'd been lusting over for years. It seemed like a fun way to commemorate this major goal I had just achieved.

This is exactly what I need to get back on my feet,
I thought.

Bridget had tested to be a Playmate years earlier, so she knew what Playmates were paid and that with the growing popularity of the show, we deserved much more than what
Playboy
was offering. But she also knew there was zero point in arguing about it. She slowly put her pen to paper and signed away the photo rights. But worse than our bottom end of the scale pay for the pictorial was the fact that despite being the stars of the show, Hef and the producers decided that Bridget, Kendra, and I wouldn't receive a single dime for the first order of
The Girls Next Door
. Hef would later argue that he considered our pictorial fee our payment for season one. He clearly knew the value of a “buy one, get one free” deal. I recall someone connected to the show reminding us that we got “free room and board” at the mansion. This guy clearly didn't realize the heavy price of this “room and board”: how restricted our freedoms were and all that was expected of us.

While the filming on the first batch of
GND
episodes was wrapping, Kendra had finally gathered the courage to bring the issue up during a meeting the three of us had with the show's highest-ranking producers.

“Shouldn't we like . . . be getting, like . . .
paid
for doing the show?” she asked nervously. It really was a valid question and she broached the topic in a delicate way. We were working countless hours, opening up our private lives, and baring our bodies for public consumption, so in her mind that was worth something. She wasn't being accusatory; she was just being logical.

The response she received was not what any of us were expecting to hear.

One of the producers took a deep breath and suddenly became very firm before spitting out slowly and methodically (so that our tiny little brains had time to absorb this fact): “You. Are. Replaceable.” (That would become the unofficial motto of
GND
for seasons to come.) “This is not a show about the girls who live at the Playboy Mansion. It's about Hugh Hefner and who
he
chooses to date. It is
not
about any of
you
.” We were constantly reminded that the show was
Hef's
show—our contributions were irrelevant. We were the decorative icing, not the cake. According to our boyfriend, he could have splashed any three blondes on screen and found instant success. This producer's firm response quickly silenced Kendra into submission.

In the days and weeks following the photo shoot, I routinely stalked Mary O'Connor's office looking for the
Playboy
“brown book” (a mock-up of an upcoming issue for Hef's approval made from thick, brown, grocery-bag-like paper). I'm a self-proclaimed super snoop, so I spent hours lingering around her desk hoping to get a peek of our pictorial. Eventually, my persistence paid off.

As it appeared on the show, we were all oh so naturally sitting in a circle on the floor of Bridget's room when Hef came in to present the book to us. In actuality, Bridget and I spotted the book in Mary's office one afternoon and quickly flipped through it to get a first look at our feature. When we finally saw it, we weren't as thrilled as we could have been. Physically, we looked great. The photography, lighting, and makeup that
Playboy
used at the time was so flattering, very little retouching (if any) was needed. Even back then, most people assumed that the women of
Playboy
were mainly a product of Photoshop, but that wasn't the case with most of the pictorials. Kendra would eventually request to have her labia Photoshopped out of one of the pictures where her legs were in the air, but that was about it. Years later,
Playboy
would auction off that brown book, complete with Kendra's crotch circled in Hef's red pen. So much for not having that out there! But it wasn't what we looked like that bothered us, it was which photos were selected.

The large opening shot just so happened to be the picture of Bridget, Kendra, and me in our sexy cocktail attire with Hef plastered right between us. Remember those brief few clicks he casually wandered into? Maybe it's just me, but I'm not so sure men picking up the magazine would be all that turned on by a septuagenarian man front and center. We quickly realized that none of our individual looks had been chosen—the one piece of the pictorial that could differentiate us from one another. The steamiest photo in the feature was a full-page photo of Kendra and me in the bathhouse shower. Like I said, at the time we didn't think anything of the extra shots, but looking at it in context was quite different. This was one of the largest photos in the pictorial, and it was very clearly missing one-third of our group. Needless to say, Bridget was upset. I'm certain Kendra or I would have felt slighted as well, but Bridget had dreamed of becoming a Playmate even longer than Kendra or I had, so she took this quite personally.

On the show, Bridget returned from class already worked up over the shower ordeal. On camera, she confided to her sister about how upset it made her to be excluded from the day's final setup and decided to speak with Hef about it. In the scene, viewers see Hef come to comfort Bridget, who was sitting on the floor playing with her cat.

This is the exchange audiences hear:

BRIDGET:
I know, but that's what I'm saying; everyone would feel the same way.

HEF:
Okay, okay. Absolutely. Let me see what I can do. That isn't exactly the toughest one to do; it's a shower and hair.

BRIDGET:
I know, but I just feel like saying something makes me seem ungrateful, and I'm not.

HEF:
Listen, I know how important all of this is to you. I'll figure out some kind of solution, honey.

In
real
reality, events didn't play out that way. Bridget didn't discuss the shower sequence with Hef until
after
we saw the brown book—and long after the pictorial shoot had wrapped (which was why Kendra appeared so agitated at having to shoot again). At the end of the episode that aired, people can clearly see the two-shot of Kendra and me in the brown book when Hef is showing it to us (the photo that went to press was the shot of the three of us in the shower).

Bridget was sensitive about how her reaction would be perceived, so she told producers she wished to speak to Hef off camera and asked that they respect her privacy. The crew preferred to film everything as it was happening, but they eventually agreed that Bridget could speak to Hef off camera. Reality producers love to find loopholes, though.

Both Bridget and Hef were still mic'd when the conversation took place, so the post-production crew dubbed their private dialogue over stock footage of Bridget and Hef playing with her cat, their backs towards the cameras. Oh, the magic of Hollywood!

I
N THE BEGINNING
, I have to admit that I didn't have a ton of faith in the process. I believed that everyone was pigeonholing us into their preconceived ideas of who we were and that audiences would see right through the facade—or, at very least, quickly become bored.

Perhaps there's a reason I wasn't a reality TV producer in 2005, because there was most definitely a method to their madness.

Nearly a million viewers tuned in to watch the premier episode of
The Girls Next Door.
A million! Overnight, the show became this pop culture sensation. The network immediately upped the order from 8 to 15 episodes for season one. Every Monday we'd receive ratings from the previous night's airing, and every week they were higher than the last. Not only were audiences fascinated at getting a glimpse inside the wondrous world of
Playboy,
but also at meeting Hef's three girlfriends. Kendra, Bridget, and I wouldn't really grasp the scope of how major this was for years to come.

For her part, Kendra was reality TV gold—especially in 2005. America was at the height of its obsession with dumb blondes. Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson were among the most famous women of the time due to their airheaded antics on their shows
The Simple Life
and
Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica
. On camera, Kendra was spontaneous, carefree, and brimming with those bumbling mishaps ripe for television. And let's just say, when it came to Kendra, none of those dumb blonde moments ever had to be scripted.

On top of being the house cheerleader and the emotional anchor to our trio, Bridget was also the perfect attraction for more “conservative” viewers. With a serviceman brother, an adorable teenage sister, and deep-rooted family values (despite living at the Playboy Mansion), she connected with Middle America.

I added some levity to the show. Despite being delusional about my relationship with Hef, I recognized many of the absurdities of mansion life, and audiences seemed to gravitate towards that. I could roll my eyes along with those men and women sitting on their couch when Hef insisted on us all embracing in a cheesy group hug or laugh along with them at one of Kendra's dumb blonde moments—and actually be
in
on the joke, instead of its punch line. Sure, it could be construed as bitchy, but it seemed to strike the right counterbalance. Plus, there was only so much I could handle. While I loved shooting, deep down, I still hated that
this
was how I had become famous.

Like a busty version of the Three Musketeers, we complemented each other's personalities well on camera. The initial appeal of
Playboy
was obvious, but what was unexpected was the audience fascination with the three of us. People came to the show for an inside look at Hugh Hefner's magical world, but they stayed because of Kendra, Bridget, and me. I honestly believe the show wouldn't have worked as well with any other cast of characters that had lived in the mansion. If cameras started rolling a year earlier when the Mean Girls still haunted the hallways, I don't think any production team could have made those women even the least bit likable.

Towards the end of season one, upwards of 1.5 million people were tuning in each Sunday night to see what was happening with the three quirky blondes on Charing Cross Road—major numbers for the network.

However, despite the show's immense popularity, we weren't able to celebrate many of the positive perks of our newfound celebrity. As usual, we remained locked behind the mansion gates, bound to our dictator's rules. We weren't well known enough yet to be recognized while simply running errands (usually in Juicy sweats and without makeup)—especially without one another or Hef. The club nights had slowed to a halt and we weren't permitted to do any of our own press, so any fan-demonium we experienced still seemed to revolve around
Playboy
and Hef. I never knew we girls had fans of our own until later into the series.

But thanks to the Internet, we
were
able to absorb the full scope of the criticism that spewed from countless online haters.

In 2005, Myspace was still the most important social media site available, and was used primarily on personal computers (who had a smartphone back then?). These were the calm days before Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter became national obsessions. The term “cyber bullying” hadn't even yet been coined. While today most people are aware of the dangers of the anonymous taunting on social media (and many have been victims themselves), reading truly cruel remarks about yourself online from complete strangers was a form of self-torture that I wasn't quite prepared to deal with.

My self-confidence was already fragile, so I took the vicious online attacks far more personally than I should have. Gold diggers, whores, sluts, stupid . . . we were called everything I had always feared I would be called for being a part of this group. When I would stumble upon a message board discussing
The Girls Next Door,
not only did I feel hated but also completely isolated. Even though Kendra and Bridget received equally as brutal commentary from these miserable trolls hiding behind their computers, there's something very lonely about being a battering ram for a group of hateful people. And absolutely nothing was sacred. Even those physical qualities I did feel secure with were subject to public ridicule (I love my big eyes, but ruthless haters labeled them “reptilian”).