Jenny McCarthy Reveals Why Her Playboy Mansion Experience Was Different From Other Playmates

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The Playboy Mansion was not all it was cracked up to be now that former Playmates like Holly Madison and his widow, Crystal Hefner, have revealed the secrets behind Hugh Hefner‘s empire. Yet there’s one person who might have had a decent experience working with Playboy magazine and she believes there’s an understandable reason why.

On Monday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Jenny McCarthy revealed why she didn’t appear in the Secrets of Playboy documentary after being a Playmate of the Year in 1994. “There was that big Playboy scandal TV show special. They asked me to be part of it constantly and I’m like, ‘Listen, I didn’t have that experience. Pamela [Anderson] didn’t have that experience.’ We were at a different time, I think,” she explained. “I was there when his kids were throwing bacon at me on high chairs. It was, like, the perfect time.” Hugh was “married at the time” to 1989’s Playmate of the Year, Kimberley Conrad, they divorced in 2010. 

Related story Holly Madison Reveals How Her Playboy Mansion Experience Impacted Her Parenting

Even though she had a “positive experience” at the mansion, the vibe wasn’t really all that sexy. “There was still so much sex going on with like gross celebrities in the grotto area, stuff like that. I went to the parties, so I got to see a lot of that action,” The Masked Singer judge admitted. “Unfortunately, they would invite like … for every 20 guys, there was one girl. The guys were just in heaven. But also, the guys were also 70 years old. There was only hot women and the ugliest dudes. They were like really, really old.” McCarthy described it as “Viagra central.”

McCarthy’s time with Hugh is vastly different from what his third wife shared in her recent memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself. She talked at length with People about how the former sex magazine founder dictated the beauty rules at the Playboy Mansion. Our nail polish couldn’t be anything but some neutral color, no French manicure,” Crystal noted. “He would tell me ‘Wear the flag.’ That’s the Playboy logo and those shirts were uncomfortable and cheap.” 

Madison also echoed Crystal’s sentiments to People about Hugh creating “a body dysmorphia” situation for her. “I was always kind of wondering what’s wrong with me,” she said. “[Hugh] had a way of making me feel like I wasn’t pretty enough, and I would look around to everybody else and constantly be wondering, what’s so different about them and why are they so much better?” McCarthy sounds like she was fortunate to be there at a time when his focus at Playboy was much different, she came out relatively unscathed while other women still bear the scars of his alleged abuse.

Before you go, click here to see all the celebrity women who have posed for Playboy.

Related story Holly Madison Reveals How Her Playboy Mansion Experience Impacted Her Parenting