It was disappointing to realize how incompatible we were, but I cared about him, so initially I just felt sorry for him. But as time went on, I saw a mean, bullying, and deceptive side of him, and I started to get disgusted. I had been so enchanted by this man and by my overwhelming desire to feel loved and needed that I hadn’t even taken the time to get to know him before committing myself to him. I realized I needed an exit strategy. And fast.
Criss insisted that I be present for every one of his performances. In the beginning, I would watch the show from a seat in the audience—and Criss would manage to work my name into the narrative and introduce me at the end, along with his family. Initially I thought it was sweet, but it soon became embarrassing. Eventually he would suggest that I wait backstage with his bodyguard, which meant I would be there to greet Criss during his quick between-scene changes. He told me that having me there helped the shows go by faster for him.
My mind was on my next step. Every time Criss went back on stage, I used those few minutes to pull out my BlackBerry and add to a list of what I needed to do. He was with me every other minute of the day, so this was my only chance. I quickly made the list: find an apartment in Las Vegas, contact Crazy Horse Paris (Criss had successfully talked me out of accepting their offer to guest star), get my valuables out of Criss’s safe, etc. I wrote all of this in French so Criss wouldn’t be able to read the notes the next time he snatched my phone away from me.
“Who are you texting?” the bodyguard sneered at me, throwing me a suspicious look.
“No one,” I said as I pocketed my phone. “I’m just writing down some ideas.”
I WAS DONE. I had gone to bed finally ready to leave Criss. He had started another one of his one-sided arguments over nothing and I had had enough. I didn’t even try to engage him, and instead quietly sat through the rant until he calmed down and I was finally able to go to sleep.
The next morning, his fit clearly wasn’t over. He stormed out of the master bathroom, tearing up a Valentine’s Day card I had given him featuring my pinup portrait by Olivia on the front. Criss was screaming about having just noticed that the rendering included a pair of curled-up pink bunny ears on top of my head, striking a deep nerve in him.
Criss finally said that he thought I should go back to my parents and that he would buy me a plane ticket.
“Okay,” I said, barely louder than a whisper. I was afraid to argue with him. I silently congratulated myself on this easy out he had just provided me.
He stormed out of the room and yelled loudly to one of his assistants to book me on a flight to Portland that afternoon.
I crept out of bed and began gathering what I needed. Luckily, I still had a perpetually packed suitcase at the ready for my back-and-forth-to-L.A. trips that had come to an immediate halt a few months earlier.
Criss asked me if I wanted to wear my jewelry, slyly eyeing the vintage Gucci watch I had purchased for myself, my small cross necklace, and the ring he had given me.
“Yes,” I replied without thinking. It never occurred to me that he would actually expect the gifts back. After all, I had bought him expensive things, too.
When I finally pulled my things—and myself—together, I walked out into the living room of the suite. Criss’s bodyguard was standing by to drive me to the airport.
“Bye,” I said, giving Criss a cold, distant hug.
“Take care,” he said just as coolly, before planting a kiss on my head and asking me to let him know that I got in safe.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S wrong with me,” I cried through a stream of tears. “It’s like, I know he’s an asshole and I know he’s not good for me, but I’m still so sad. I don’t get it.”
I was home in Oregon; the same place where I had decided to pack up my little red Celica nearly a decade earlier. In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed and I was back where I started. I had no job, no man, and no prospects lined up. Luckily my close friend Sara Underwood lived in Portland and spent an afternoon listening to me as I poured my heart out. She was an absolute angel and held my hand through my frequent sobs. I was so grateful to have her there. She listened and offered me the best advice she could, but the real problem wasn’t obvious to either of us at that point.
Yes, I had just embarked on a high-profile romance that went wrong, quickly and dramatically, but that wasn’t really where my emotional crash was coming from. I was suddenly having to deal with my transition from the twisted world of Playboy into the real world. It was the unavoidable emotional fallout that had been postponed by my whirlwind romance with Criss.
What was I going to do now? I thought, feeling hopeless.
After a week in Oregon, my dad drove me to the airport and I boarded a flight to Los Angeles. I had no idea what was going to happen next, but I was determined to brave the storm, despite the heavy burden of sadness I carried onto the plane with me.
Criss’s voice echoed in my mind, telling me I needed to go back to California. During a few of his tantrums, when he was mulling over a breakup out loud, he would always banish me to California, as if he owned Las Vegas.
Where I go and what I do isn’t your prerogative, I thought, as if I now had a chance to respond to one of his treacherous rants.
I felt like Hef was trying to sabotage me in Los Angeles by bad-mouthing me and leaving me out of Girls Next Door–related press, and now Criss was trying to banish me from Las Vegas.
Sorry, boys, it’s not going to be that easy, I thought, pulling my hoodie over my head. I felt the rumbling of the plane engines beneath my seat. You haven’t seen the last of me.
CHAPTER 13
For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
After my breakup with Criss, I returned to La-La Land absolutely lost. I knew that I wanted a successful career, but I didn’t know how to go about achieving it. Since arriving back in Los Angeles, I was still reeling from the emotional fallout of my relationships with both Hef and Criss. For the first time in almost eight years, I was entirely on my own, but this time, I was carrying a whole load of emotional baggage behind me. What am I going to do next?
God bless Mary O’Connor. After I had spent all those years at the mansion, Mary became more than a friend to me . . . she became like family. When she and her partner, “Captain Bob,” invited me to stay in their spare bedroom while I got my feet on the ground, I couldn’t have been more grateful. While she remained Hef’s loyal and loving secretary for more than 40 years, Mary was also a compassionate woman who knew I needed her (and knew damn well that Hef respected her too much to ever reprimand her for taking me in).
Of course I had my own apartment in Santa Monica, but I had become terrified of being by myself. I was desperately lonely and didn’t feel at ease in my apartment. There was no security at my building and the neighborhood in Santa Monica where it was located didn’t feel very safe after dark. Every night I noticed a truck parked across the street from my living room window with a man sitting in the driver’s seat for hours. I have no idea why he was there, but I found it creepy. What I needed most was a comfortable, safe atmosphere surrounded by people I loved and who wanted the best for me. It was the only way I could be sure that my next decision would be a smart one. I was scared of making another bad choice because I was anxious, lonely, or desperate.
Despite Hef and the producers’ incessant lobbying for my return to the mansion and the series (even though Crystal and the twins were already occupying our former spots), Mary encouraged me to make the best decision for me and to follow my heart.
“It’s better for you to be on your own,” she told me. Mary had a wonderfully maternal nature—and I often looked to her for guidance. “You need to live your life. There’s not much you can really do at the mansion.”
A few days after I arrived, I contacted Criss’s assistant about shipping
out everything I’d left behind in my hasty departure. When the boxes arrived on Mary’s doorstep, I burst into tears. I knew I didn’t want to be with Criss, but I was still broken. It’s a humbling experience having a stack of cardboard boxes packed neatly with your belongings shipped back to you without even a single word.
I felt like I had been thrown out with the trash.
When news of Criss’s and my breakup eventually leaked to TMZ, Criss began calling me and sending me nasty text messages accusing me of tipping off the press.
He angrily accused me of telling “them.” When I asked him who he meant, he said, “Playboy,” and went on to rant about how he knew this would happen and angrily said that I had better be saying he broke up with me.
There could have been no greater way of insulting Criss than if people assumed that I had been the one who actually wanted out of the relationship. I honestly didn’t care what people thought—I was just happy to be a safe distance away from him.
We had barely spoken since I left him in Las Vegas that morning, so needless to say, we never really discussed how we were going to handle our very public breakup with the press. I didn’t know who told TMZ about our dissolution (since I had only informed my family and a few friends), but it seemed Criss was irate because he had his own ideas about how he would announce our split. Since we still shared the same publicist, we both got an email from him asking what kind of “joint statement” we would like to make about the breakup.
Criss responded first, demanding that he tell them nothing.
Our publicist quickly replied:
We have to tell the press something. If you don’t, no one will want to cover you the next time you date a celebrity.
Ouch, I thought, hit him where it hurts.
Eventually, we agreed to make a statement saying we broke up amicably due to scheduling differences—regardless of the fact that I had nothing to schedule. I don’t know if anyone bought the excuse, but I didn’t really care. The media and the public had become so used to seeing Criss run through starlets for publicity that I doubt many people ever believed our relationship was genuine . . . I was possibly the only one who had!
Now that my relationship with Criss was behind me, I could finally focus on my future. Though I was tempted to waste away in Mary’s spare room, I knew I had to take action. At the insistence of Criss, I had turned down most of the opportunities that had come my way shortly after I left the mansion—most of which Criss’s jealousy didn’t allow for. Besides Mary, no one associated with Playboy or Girls Next Door would have anything to do with me, unless I abandoned my own dignity and returned to the mansion, which was the last thing I would do.
No, I thought. I’m starting from scratch—and I’m doing it on my own.
I made a list of the things I still hoped to accomplish in my life and career. Being able to see my goals spelled out in front of me was an important part of the process.
For my career, my list was pretty specific:
1. Develop a reality series that showcases the real Holly—apart from Girls Next Door, Playboy, and Hef.
2. Star in a Las Vegas show.
3. Appear on Dancing with the Stars.
The list went on, but those were my main goals. Prior to leaving the mansion, I had interviewed for Dancing with the Stars and even met the producers. I had fallen in love with the series when its second season aired in 2006. The contestants looked like they were having so much fun and I couldn’t take my eyes off contestant Stacy Keibler’s flashy costumes. Although I wasn’t a dancer, I was dying to be on the show—it looked like the contestants were having the time of their lives! But despite how popular The Girls Next Door was at the time, rumor had it that one of the show’s producers didn’t think Middle America could relate to a young woman who lived with an old man like Hugh Hefner. Determined to one day appear on the series, I tried revisiting the idea two months earlier during a meeting with Criss’s managers (this was during the period he insisted on “shaping” my career).
“So I called Dancing with the Stars,” Criss’s manager began, “since you told me you were interested in it, but they’ve already cast their upcoming season.”
Criss remarked snidely that Dancing with the Stars was a show for “has-beens” and the only person to have ever done it right was Marie Osmond, because she did it right before she opened her show in Vegas.
None of my career ideas were up to Criss’s standard, so this one—like many others—was shot down.
After making my list, I decided that tomorrow would be the beginning of a fresh start. I knew what I hoped to achieve; now I charged myself with the task of going out there and making it happen. Deep down I knew that I would be okay. For the first time in weeks, I felt optimistic about my future. I knew I needed to gather my strength, so I decided to let myself sleep in before somehow starting a new life the next day.
When I crawled out of bed later the next morning, I noticed I had three missed calls and voice mails from the same number on my BlackBerry. Each was from a producer at Dancing with the Stars urgently looking to get ahold of me.
Holy shit, I thought! Was I dreaming this? I listened to the voice mails again just to make sure I hadn’t completely taken a dive off the deep end. The producer had hoped she had the right number, since she was calling the phone number they had listed on my file from the first time I interviewed.
It was such an uncanny coincidence that I had to believe that someone above was answering my prayers. Since they had just announced the season eight roster a few weeks earlier (and the series was actually premiering the following week), I figured that casting directors must be beginning their search for the following season’s hopefuls.
“Hi, this is Holly Madison returning your call,” I said nervously into my cell phone to whichever bigwig I had just happened to call. (In all the excitement, I didn’t even remember the name of the person who had called me.)
The producer confided (after swearing me to confidentiality) that singer/songwriter Jewel had seriously injured herself during rehearsals and they were desperately in need of a quick replacement.
“Would you be willing to do it?” she asked expectantly. “You would only have four days to learn your routine, while every other contestant has already had a month’s worth of rehearsals.”
“Are you kidding? Of course!” I gleefully shouted into the phone. I couldn’t believe my luck. “Absolutely. Thank you so much. I’m beyond grateful for this opportunity,” I continued to stammer, positively beside myself. “I can’t believe it!”
She seemed totally relieved and let out a big laugh. It was meant to be! After giving her all my current contact information, I called my publicist, telling him the good news and swearing him to secrecy. My addition to the DWTS cast was supposed to be kept quiet until they announced it live on the premier episode.
The next few days were an absolute Cinderella story. After signing the contract with Dancing, I was immediately whisked off to meet my new partner, Dmitry Chaplin (a new DWTS talent who graduated from TV’s other juggernaut dance series, So You Think You Can Dance). Production provided me with my first set of dance shoes for our rehearsal. Eight hours of practice later, my feet had erupted in terrible blisters, but I didn’t care. I lined the shoes with moleskin before returning the next morning. Not even the pain in my feet could dampen my spirits as I skipped my way back to the studio, eager to continue our routine.
Our first number was a cha-cha to Lady Gaga’s anthem “Just Dance.” I was overcome with excitement. Could they have chosen a more perfect song for this particular time of my life? After the second day of rehearsals, I was swept away to the office of Emmy-award-winning costume designer Randall Christensen on the CBS lot to begin fittings for my first outfit. (Side note: While the series airs on ABC, it’s actually shot on the CBS lot in West Hollywood.)
Reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden age, the costumes for each DWTS episode are crafted in-house each week. In what felt like no time, Christensen whi
pped up a short, vibrant orange dress drenched in beaded fringe and Swarovski crystals. It was absolutely to die for. Even though I was the new girl on set, the producers, cast, and crew couldn’t have been more welcoming. Everyone was an absolute delight to work with—and seemingly grateful that I agreed to step in at the very last minute. Little did they know that this was the break I had been praying for—an opportunity when I truly needed it most.
Was I nervous to perform my newly learned dance in front of a live studio audience and 22 million viewers watching live at home? Duh! But not too nervous to forget to have fun and enjoy my moment in the spotlight (without any ominous boyfriend hovering over me). As long as I remembered the routine, I was going to be okay. My priority was to have a good time, work hard, and of course enjoy wearing the fabulous, sparkly costumes!
Over the course of my tenure on the show, my scores were mediocre, my dancing wasn’t great, and the eight-hour rehearsals, five days a week were brutal, but I was having the time of my life. After practice, I’d make the drive back to Mary and Captain Bob’s home in the Valley and collapse on my bed. For the next month, my life would be: eat, sleep, dance, repeat.
After my debut, Criss eventually reached out to me to offer his congratulations. With distance and a bit of time between us, it appeared we could be civil. Some of his messages were very flirty or risqué, but I didn’t bite. I had heard through the grapevine that he had already moved on and was living with his current girlfriend. Plus, I knew Criss well enough to be certain that any sort of affirmation I was getting from him was most likely motivated by the new positive publicity I was receiving for being a part of the DWTS cast. For my part, I didn’t resent him for how he had treated me, even though I could have. Instead of wallowing in the past, I chose to happily close that chapter of my life and be satisfied that we seemed to be on good terms.
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Page 27
