I hate to be this girl BUT…we have a crazy exciting announcement for you next week so while we get ready for that I thought it’d be fun to revisit one of my favorite episodes.

Fun fact: I grew up next door to the Playboy Mansion. So, to me, the girls next door really were the Girls Next Door.

It added another layer to my already colorful childhood, with parties and peacocks that kept me up for all hours of the night.

But one incredible day in 2005, E! Released a brand new show called…THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR, and the lives of every millennial girl changed forever. The Girls Next Door was a reality show about The Playboy Mansion, Hugh Hefner and his three girlfriends Holly, Bridget and Kendra. These dynamic women quickly became the stars of the show, and captured the hearts of families and young women nationwide. The show gave us a look inside the wild lifestyle of three very different women with one common interest: their boyfriend. It showed their extravagant costumes, the parties they’d host, vacations and day trips all over the world, their butlers, lavish lifestyle, and many, many dogs.

But, as with most things, their lives weren’t quite what they seemed. In addition to all the fun and playfulness the show captured, there was jealousy, manipulation, body issues, infighting, and a dark side to the boyfriend they were basically employed by.

And damn, did we GO THERE… Holly and Bridget joined me on this week’s episode, and didn’t hold back about the years they lived at the mansion, dated Hef, and starred in (in my opinion !!!) one of the best reality shows of all time. Not only did we reminisce on the years we spent as neighbors, but they let me in on the secrets of the mansion, Hef’s world, the parts they’d rather forget, and everrrrryyything in between.

We explored Holly’s neurodivergence, some of the sexual aspects of the girls’ relationships with Hef, how they feel about his death, and how it impacts the way they think about him now. They told me all about the drama inside the mansion, the excuses they’d use to get out of going out or sex, diet culture within the house, the rules they were expected to follow, and answered ALL our burning, behind-the-scenes questions we’ve spent the last decade dying to know. Don’t quote me on this, but this might be one of the juiciest TMAI episodes of all time.

Download this episode of Tell Me About It with Jade Iovine wherever you get your podcasts! And to continue the conversation DM me: https://www.instagram.com/jadeiovine/

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Lucian Staiano-Daniels, "The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)