Holly Madison Says 'Girls Next Door' Editing 'Made Me Sound Like an Idiot'

Holly Madison has claimed Girls Next Door producers made her "sound like an idiot" on the show.

During Monday's episode of her Girls Next Level podcast, which she co-hosts with former Girls Next Door co-star Bridget Marquardt, Madison said her words were often taken out of context.

In a confessional during the early days of the series—which ran from 2005 to 2010—Madison, 42, said she gave Marquardt a compliment, but it didn't sound that way when the episode aired.

"I said, 'Bridget wants to be a Playmate and get her PhD, achieving all there is to achieve in body and mind,'" Madison said to her listeners, as well as Marquardt. "That's what I said, meaning you want to be a Playmate because that's achieving physically, and you want to get a PhD because that's achieving mentally."

Madison said, however, that "they cut out the PhD and had me saying, 'Bridget really wants to be a Playmate because she thinks that would be achieving everything you could achieve in body and mind.'"

"I hated that even back then!" Madison said. "I was like, 'They make me sound like a goddamn idiot.'"

Marquardt, 49, added that the comment had a negative effect on her, too. "I feel like it also makes me seem like an idiot too, because do I really think that being a Playmate is gonna be all I can achieve in body and mind?"

"Yeah, like what the hell is that?" Madison agreed.

Marquardt said "it wasn't until later" that she "realized" what Madison meant, noting that people still "comment on that here and there."

"I mean, they should. It's idiotic," Madison laughed.

This isn't the first time the mom of two—who shares kids Rainbow and Forest with ex-husband Pasquale Rotella—called out the show.

On Heather McDonald's Juicy Scoop podcast, Madison said producer Kevin Burns purposely pitted her against Kendra Wilkinson, who also appeared on the E! reality series.

"Things got weird with me and Kendra, and I felt like he was encouraging that," Madison, an author, said.

"I was on the phone screaming with him, and he admitted to me that he wanted us to not get along because he thought it would be good publicity," she said, referring to Burns. "And I'm like, 'I don't want any part of that...'"

Madison and Marquardt have been spilling behind-the-scenes secrets about the show on Girls Next Level since the podcast premiered in August.

From 2001 to 2008, Madison dated Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine's founder and editor-in-chief, and though she was his main girlfriend, Marquardt and Wilkinson were also in a relationship with him.

During a previous episode, Marquardt claimed the women disliked being intimate with Hefner, saying sex with the publisher was a "chore."

"None of the females were into it—like, sorry to burst the bubble," Madison said.

Hefner died on September 27, 2017 at the age of 91, and Burns passed away on the same day three years later in 2020. He was 65 years old.