Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

OUR FIFTH CYCLE WOULD end up being a season of growing pains. Looking back, I see that it makes
sense that this was our last season as a trio. From an outsider’s perspective, however, everything
looked like it couldn’t be going any better. The series had become such a phenomenon, there was
even a movie being made about it. Well, sort of. The House Bunny, starring Anna Faris, was a
comedy set at the Playboy Mansion, centering on a fictional Playmate who finds herself kicked out of
the mansion (upon turning 27) and takes refuge in a sorority house. In the film, Anna plays a mansion
resident named Shelley, a character clearly based on Bridget.
“You should have been the sporty one,” Kendra teasingly pouted at Anna the first time we met
her as she prepared to shoot a scene in the mansion’s backyard. Anna was done up with curly blond
hair, a frilly pink outfit, and her character had a grumpy pet cat, similar to Bridget’s cat, Gizmo.
Bridget’s pink-striped bedroom was used as Shelley’s room in the movie. Even the high-pitched
voice and sunny, Pollyanna attitude Anna affected for her character were very much Bridget’s style.
We had cameos in the film, playing ourselves for a few scenes. The movie would hit the number
two spot at the box office on its opening weekend. Even I couldn’t believe what a phenomenon this
frilly, frothy, girly (and in many ways make-believe) version of the Playboy world had become.
Not everything in our world was cotton candy and fluffy bunny tails, however. That year, Kendra
started taking Accutane for an acne problem she had grown increasingly self-conscious of. To me,
Kendra was a beautiful girl, with acne or without, so on one hand I couldn’t understand her paranoia,
but on the other hand I could. Every girl who ever lived at the mansion knew that her entire value, in
Hef’s eyes, depended on the way she looked. In fact, in an interview from the previous year for an
Elle magazine article, Kendra confessed: “I’m very insecure right now about my face. I get scared
with Hef looking at me at the mansion and maybe thinking I’m ugly.” I certainly understood how she
felt. In that same article, Hef went out of his way to tell the writer that I had only “become beautiful”
and that I “didn’t look the same” as when he first met me, going on to attribute my new acceptability
to my nose job.
Gee, thanks, Hef!
Whether it was an excuse not to have to adhere to the filming schedules she hated keeping or if
she really had grown debilitatingly insecure, Kendra often refused to come out of her room to film
scenes. I would find out later that this was around the time she started secretly seeing her future
husband, Hank Baskett, so maybe that factored into the equation as well. The producers were
desperate to find someone to take Kendra’s spot, should she decide to stop coming out completely.
No one was talking about adding a new girlfriend or anything, but I was asked to recruit some
girls that I thought would be good for the show to stay at the Bunny House for a month or so while we
filmed. I chose Laura Croft, a wild and crazy Playmate from Florida; Kayla Collins, the bouncy
blonde from the “Go West Young Girl” episode; and Angel Porrino (also from the “Go West”
episode), the funny girl with the high-pitched voice from Las Vegas.
Having the girls around proved helpful as Kendra refused to participate in quite a few of the
episodes (sometimes she would salvage her spot at the last minute by agreeing to film something by
herself; other times she was just missing in action).
When Bridget produced a campy B movie called The Telling, Kendra didn’t take part, even