Jenny McCarthy says her experience in the Playboy Mansion was different from those depicted in Secrets of Playboy.
There were many disturbing allegations in the A&E 10-part docuseries, which aired earlier this year, including the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner being accused of raping multiple women. McCarthy, who first posed as a Playmate in the magazine in 1993 and was Playmate of the Year in 1994, said she declined participation in the series, despite multiple requests, because she said she resided there in a tamer era.
“They asked me to host that show,” the Masked Singer judge, 49, revealed on the #NoFilter With Zack Peter podcast. “They wanted me to really be involved and be an executive producer and be in it.”
She turned them down six times because “I didn’t have the same experiences,” she continued. “So I wasn’t going to sign up for a paycheck and be salacious when I didn’t experience those things.”
And make no mistake, “Hearing their stories, my heart broke for a lot of these women,” McCarthy said. Accusers have claimed to have been sexually abused, drugged, groomed, isolated, among many other allegations.
“I’m so grateful that when I was there, Hef was married” to second wife Kimberly Conrad, and the Playboy Mansion “was kind of run like a strict dormitory. Like, we weren’t even allowed near Hef or around the house. It was almost like Catholic school, to be honest,” said McCarthy, who last posed for Playboy at age 40.
While the doc detailed orgies multiple nights a week with women claiming they were given “leg spreader” Quaaludes — and Girls Next Door‘s Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt discussed in their new podcast — McCarthy said, “There were no orgies or big parties going on” when she was there. “So I think I went in there in a window of time that was kind of safe. But hearing some of these girls’ stories was really rough.”
When it was pointed out how Madison and Marquardt’s recollection of their time in the house was different from Kendra Wilkinson, who has remained supportive of Hefner (though made it clear she hated having sex with him), who died in 2017.
“I have three sisters and when I’m publicly telling my stories of childhood, [one] will call me and say, ‘What house were you living in?’ Because … everyone has a different story and outline of their life. That’s the analogy I would use with Playmates,” said McCarthy, who’s now married to Donnie Wahlberg. “Yeah, we were in the same house. We all didn’t experience the same s***.”
