Holly Madison accuses Crystal Hefner of ripping off book: ‘Do your research and don’t copy’
Holly Madison has some strong feelings about Crystal Hefner's memoir, "Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself."
During a recent appearance on the "LadyGang" podcast, the "Girls Next Door" star and former Playmate, who released her tell-all book, "Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny," in 2015 explained why she feels Crystal's tale is "too similar" to her own.
"Anybody who's read my book that came out eight years ago and then read her book, tell me the narrative voice doesn't sound exactly the same," said Holly, who's been open about her tumultuous relationship with the late Hugh Hefner while living in the Playboy Mansion years ago. "Drives me up a wall."
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"She weaves fairy tale references in and out just like I did and uses a lot of the same psychological catchphrases, and things like that. I'm weirded out by it, especially since she had a ghostwriter," Holly added. "Like, do your research and don’t copy. . . . You would have thought that it went through somebody reading it that would be like, ‘That’s a little bit too similar.'"
"[It felt] like reading my own book," she added.
Crystal, whose marriage to Hugh ended when he died in 2017 at age 91, released her book earlier this year.
She claimed her nearly five-year union with Hugh was "emotionally abusive," noting in her book that he "could be charming" but also "cruel."
"Over a little bit of time, I gained a bit of weight, and he told me that I needed to tone up," Crystal claimed. "Then he started telling me what color nails I could have and couldn’t have. [I had to] wear more colorful shirts, wear ‘the flag,’ which means the Playboy logo on my body, somewhere on my shirt. I had to dye my roots, bleach my roots. If that was growing out, he would tap it and tell me to go fix it."
Crystal also alleged that during their marriage, she had a restrictive curfew and was required to rush back to the Playboy Mansion before dark. The book claimed that if she were late, Hefner would scream at her.
While Holly detailed similar scenarios in her own memoir, she said it was "relieving" to hear that she wasn't the only one who had a horrific experience while living in the Playboy Mansion.
"A lot of it's been very relieving for me to hear," Holly said of reading Crystal's book. "Even before her book came out, when she talks about feeling like she always felt like she had to walk on eggshells or always felt like she was going to have the rug pulled out from her under any moment."
In the recent season of Investigation Discovery's (ID) true-crime series, "The Playboy Murders" - which looks at high-profile tragedies associated with the iconic magazine brand - Holly talks further about her own experience.
"I think people are really curious about the [Playboy] world," she told Fox News Digital in January. "Even though there were a lot of negative experiences attached to it, I think for better or worse, that’s what I was put here to experience – [to] come out on the other side and tell people about it."
"I do look back, and I wish there were little ways I could have done it differently," she admitted. "But you never know. If I had stuck up for myself more, had more of a voice back then, I probably wouldn’t have lasted there. So, I don’t think there’s any winning when it comes to that. I can’t really say I have any regrets, but would I want to go back and relive it? No."