Latest news with #KendraOnTop
IOL News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Kendra Wilkinson unplugged: tales from the Playboy Mansion to finding her true self
In happier times, Playboy magazine's late founder, Hugh Hefner, with Kendra Wilkinson. Image: Instagram. Kendra Wilkinson, a former Playboy model, recently shared her experiences as one of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends on "The Skinny Confidential". During the interview, she discussed the realities of life at the Playboy Mansion, her transition to being single, and her journey of self-discovery. Now a realtor, television personality, model and author, Wilkinson first captured the spotlight on the hit reality show "The Girls Next Door", which showcased life inside the Playboy Mansion. Wilkinson, who has also successfully starred in her own series "Kendra" and "Kendra On Top", reflected on how her commitment to authenticity has been the cornerstone of her two-decade long career. "I've always been this party girl, and who says it like it is. I wear my heart on my sleeve as well, which sometimes comes at a cost." Having been single now for seven years since her divorce from Hank Baskett, Wilkinson candidly spoke about the difficulties of dating: "I've been divorced and single for seven years now. I've explored little things here and there, but I have not been in a relationship. "It's going to take a lot to be my boyfriend now. I am not settling for whatever. I'm so used to being single ... Now I look at men and freak out thinking about commitment ... I get really nervous about life getting boring." Wilkinson admitted that while she does struggle with shame and regret, at the time she chose to enter the Playboy Mansion, she was faced with difficult choices in her life. "I was 18 at the time. It was either I was going to be a stripper or take this one-way ticket to LA and move into the Playboy Mansion ... those were the only two options I had, and I knew myself, I knew I could survive, so I took the trip to LA and never looked back." Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Wilkinson expressed gratitude for her time at the Mansion, describing it as a "safe and healthy environment", highlighting that, contrary to public perception, life there was not as scandalous as it seemed. "It was so amazing, and it was healthy for me, it was happy for me, I was safe, and it's taboo to the world because they don't really know what went on there. In my perspective, it was only one party every few months, and the rest was that we all had sex with Hugh Hefner once a week, and that's the taboo, that we had sex with a 70/80-year-old." "I had room service 24/7. I could eat whatever I wanted, I could eat healthy, I had chefs making me salad every day. Anything I wanted, I got. The parties were fun, I've been to worse parties outside the mansion than I ever did at the mansion. I couldn't have been happier." Wilkinson's insights into her life were not limited to her time in the Mansion; she also spoke on how she began preparing for her future. "I started setting myself up. I started booking my own work, and I hustled my a** of to get my new show, to book appearances around the world. I had issues with the business part of it, but not Hugh. He was a generous, nice person." Looking ahead, Wilkinson, who has a ten-year-old daughter, says that she has made sure that her daughter will never have to make those hard choices like she did growing up. "She's 10 and I already told her that she's going to college." Watch the full episode below.
Daily Mail
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Playboy vet Holly Madison reveals which Girls Next Door co-star she does NOT like... 8 years after Hefner's death
Blonde pinup Holly Madison was on top of the world 20 years ago. That is when the 45-year-old blonde pinup model was on the cover of Playboy magazine, dating Hugh Hefner and starring on Girls Next Door. Her reality TV show costars were Kendra Wilkinson, 39, and Bridget Marquardt, 51. The hit show ran for 91 episodes from 2005 to 2010. But not everything was smooth sailing among the three ladies, whom competed for Hef's attention and pages in his magazine. Turns out there was bad blood between Holly and one of her costars after the series ended, she told Life & Style Weekly. It was Kendra. 'Kendra I don't speak to anymore,' Holly shared with the weekly magazine. 'We were kind of driven apart during the spinoff era, when she was doing her spinoff and I was doing mine.' Kendra's show was called Kendra and Holly's was named Holly's World. 'Everything was produced by the same executive producer and sometimes, a lot of the reality drama, even off-screen, really gets in the way.' In 2016 Holly put Kendra down in her second memoir, The Vegas Diaries. Kendra has said awful things about Holly in the past. Almost a decade ago the Kendra On Top star tweeted that Madison had not 'lived in fear at the Playboy mansion.' 'She wasn't in fear with that d*** in her a** for a paycheck,' Wilkinson claimed. 'That b**** is in fear now knowing so many of us saw her doing some nasty s***. She's embarrassed and in shame. She was the clean up girl. Hollys job was to get Hef hard again and clean him up with her mouth.' Holly issued a statement to E! News: 'I've written a book, The Vegas Diaries, that's about letting go and moving on. About resolving the past so you can live a future. I've dealt with my demons and I've come out ahead. I can hold my head high and work hard to be the classy and kind person I aspire to be.' The star continued: 'I want no part of a one-sided argument or feud where one woman lives to demoralize and degrade another woman. For those with unresolved issues, therapy works. You should try it.' Then Kendra backtracked: 'I know my recent posts were a little over the top and I apologize for that. Sticking up for me n my beliefs is hard for me at times. Sorry.' Holly then issued a statement to E! News: 'I want no part of a one-sided argument or feud where one woman lives to demoralize and degrade another woman. For those with unresolved issues, therapy works. You should try it.' Last year Holly said she does not talk about diets in front of her children. The star has two children: They are daughter Rainbow, 11, and seven-year-old son Forest with ex-husband Pasquale Rotella. The blonde bombshell explained that while she is 'focused' on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, she won't discuss it in front of her kids. 'We're really focused on healthy eating. I'm really careful not to say anything about dieting or weight or anything in front of my kids,' the TV producer told UsWeekly. Madison, who shared last year she has autism, also said that she started dieting at age 11 and does not want her kids to do the same. She added: 'If they're trying to shove something unhealthy in front of me, I just say, "Oh, I'm doing a health thing."' The former Girls Next Door explained that she doesn't want her daughter to begin suffering from body image issues. And she does not want her to seek 'validation' through her appearance. That is because Holly started to experience things like that when she was her age. She said: 'We don't want her to get into the mode where she's really focused on the way she looks, or trying to get attention for the way she looks or validation through that. 'I think we've been really successful so far. 'She's on a better track than I was at that age for sure. I was already trying to look some sort of way when I was 11.' Holly was recently asked if it was true that the bathroom pipes had to be replaced from the amount of girls vomiting during their time in the mansion as they suffered from bulimia and she admitted it was 'sad' to see so many women suffering at the time. The blonde explained that while she is 'focused' on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, she won't discuss it in front of her kids. She told Us Weekly: 'We're really focused on healthy eating. I'm really careful not to say anything about dieting or weight or anything in front of my kids'; seen in 2003 in Las Vegas with Hefner On the cover of Playboy in February 2009 She said: 'On my podcast, Girls Next Level with Bridget Marquardt, we've talked to staff and other people who were there at the time that this allegedly happened, and I guess it was a thing. 'There were people who struggled with really bad eating disorders while I was there, and it was always a sad thing to see.' Holly was also at Good Morning America on Wednesday where she talked about her new true crime show, Lethally Blonde which is premiering on Monday, March 25, at 10/9c. In this series, Madison presents cases where starry-eyed aspirants with big dreams find themselves in a dark world that exploits their sexuality. This comes after Holly revealed she has autism. The blonde beauty, who used to romance Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, said she was diagnosed earlier this year after spending years wondering why she was a little different from others. Madison added she has 'high executive functioning autism' as she explained, 'It's not as extreme as for other people. So I'm not a spokesperson for everybody. 'They call it a spectrum for a reason,' she added. The reality TV dynamo told the podcast Talking To Death she 'can pretty much go about my life and do things, quote-unquote, normally.' She said for her entire life she has been introverted and was not the most comfortable small talking with people. Now that she has the diagnosis, she understands herself better and is more patient with herself: 'I can apologize to people if I interrupt or talk over them and tell them why,' she said. When she was a child she would 'zone out a lot' and had a hard time picking up on social cues. As a child, she thought one of the reasons she was different was that she grew up in Alaska then moved to Oregon. In 2021 on the Call Her Daddy podcast Madison said she was 'not neurotypical.' She wondered if she maybe had Asperger's syndrome, a term no longer used and considered part of the larger autism spectrum disorder. 'I think because I'm more quiet, I've only recently learned to make eye contact,' she shared. 'I'm often in my own thoughts, things like that, so people take that as offensive. They're like, "Damn, you're not super interested in me, f*** you!'' She said she doesn't 'have a gauge for when other people are done speaking, so I tend to interrupt a lot, which pisses people off.' She thinks she's been perhaps rubbing people the wrong way over the years with how she's interacted with them. 'They think I'm, like, stuck up or snobby or think I'm better than everybody else,' she said. Kendra's show was called Kendra and Holly's was named Holly's World. 'Everything was produced by the same executive producer and sometimes, a lot of the reality drama, even off-screen, really gets in the way.' Seen in 2007 'Like, I'm just not on the same social wavelength as other people but don't take it personally,' explained the former Playboy Playmate. 'So I like being able to explain that.' She had fun working at Hooters because 'they kind of had a persona you were supposed to adopt,' she realized. 'There's so many rules on how you're supposed to interact as a Hooters girl that I felt like I was able to navigate social situations because I had those rules.' Now she asks pals to have patience with people with autism because 'you don't know what they're dealing with or what their level of social function is.' This comes almost a year after Hefner's most famous girlfriend said she never had casual sex before meeting him and was 'kind of asexual' before the first night she slept with the magazine publisher. 'I never had casual sex with anybody before. I feel like I was kind of really asexual, so maybe I just wasn't ready for that,' she shared. Madison was 21 when she moved into the Playboy mansion in 2000 and became Hefner's 'special one,' or main girlfriend. 'I think I was drawn to try and be in the spotlight because I felt like if I could be famous, that would be a shortcut to feeling a connection with people,' Madison says in the 'Secrets of Playboy.' 'I wasn't physically attracted to Hef, but I did find him very charming.' The star also claimed Hefner offered her a Quaalude, a powerful sedative that has been illegal since 1984, the first night she went out with him and his other girlfriends. He allegedly told her, 'They used to call these thigh-openers in the '70s.' Hefner died in 2017. His son, Cooper Hefner, has since come out against the documentary, tweeting that the stories are 'a case study of regret becoming revenge.' The documentary features Hefner's former butler, who claims his boss would host 'pig night' where he would invite high-profile and celebrity friends over and secretly film them having sex with 'ugly' prostitutes he had hired. A former assistant claims Hefner used the amphetamine Dexedrine every day to keep himself alert. Playboy magazine shared a statement: 'Today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy. We trust and validate these women and their stories and we strongly support those individuals who have come forward to share their experiences.' Madison studied at Portland State University and moved to Los Angeles to finish her degree in psychology and theater at Loyola Marymount, according to Cosmopolitan. She worked as a waitress at Hooters and a model until she was invited to a party at the Playboy Mansion by Hefner's physician. According to Madison's 2015 book, Down the Rabbit Hole, she asked to move into the mansion after her first night sleeping with Hefner and other women as part of his 'bedtime routine.' She was 21 years old.
