Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend, Holly Madison, admitted she didn’t mourn his death at all and was shocked when people expected her to do so, she told People Magazine in an interview.
Madison has been candid about her experiences at the Playboy Mansion and insists she didn’t have a connection with Hefner that would prompt her to mourn his passing.
“When he passed away, everybody expected me to have some big reaction or post about it on social media, and it just felt weird,” Madison told People. “I didn’t have any emotional attachment to him anymore in any way.”
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Madison faced backlash when she refused to publicly post a tribute to Hefner when he died in 2017, a decision she still stands behind.
Madison lived with Hefner from 2001 to 2008, and she doesn’t look back fondly at her time in the Playboy Mansion. In fact, she refers to it as a “false paradise.”
“Before he passed away, there had been maybe five or six years where I just had not spoken to him at all,” she said. “He had become a completely different character in my mind.”
Madison came forward about the trauma she faced during her time at the mansion when she released a book called “Down the Rabbit Hole.” Paying tribute to Hefner seemed too far of a stretch to her.
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“I’d already come out talking about what a toxic relationship this was for me,” Madison told People. “Why am I supposed to post a memorial on my Instagram?”
When asked if Hefner’s death gave her any sense of relief, Madison pushed back. (RELATED: ‘I Just Wanted To Be First And Be Done’: Bridget Marquardt Discusses Her Sexual Encounters With Hugh Hefner)
“Not relief at all, because I felt like I had taken myself kind of out of that universe pretty solidly,” she said.
“But it was a really odd time,” she told People.