Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner. Credit :

Denise Truscello/WireImage

• Holly Madison opened up about her sex life with Hugh Hefner while she was living in the Playboy mansion — and shared that while group sex was “disgusting,” one-on-one time with Hefner was “a very different story”
• “Everybody else in the room, no. That was disgusting. I hated it. I made it very known I hated it,” she said during an appearance on the In Your Dreams podcast on May 2
• Madison was in a relationship with Hefner from 2001 to 2008

Holly Madison is opening up about her sex life with Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner — and how she “hated it” when others were involved.

The former Girls Next Door star, 45, made an appearance on the May 2 episode of the In Your Dreams podcast and spoke with host Owen Thiele about what happened in the bedroom at the Playboy Mansion during her years spent as one of Hefner’s girlfriends.

“Well, it’s a very different story between when we were just by ourselves than with everybody else in the room,” she said.

“Everybody else in the room, no,” she continued, referring to group sex. “That was disgusting. I hated it. I made it very known I hated it.

Madison also said that her 53-year age gap with Hefner — who died in 2017 at age 91 — didn’t put a damper on their sex life. “If it was just me and him, it was a lot more normal than you would think,” she revealed.

Holly Madison at the MGM Grand Las Vegas on March 22, 2025. Denise Truscello/Getty

After Thiele said he didn’t believe it could be normal, Madison replied, “Nobody does.”

“There was a time when I couldn’t post anything [on social media] without some dumba– in the comments [being] like, ‘Oh, old balls,’ ” the Girls Next Level podcast host joked. “Maybe some people’s balls do get old and nasty, but I’ve never seen such a thing.”

She did clarify that she and Hefner kept the lights off, so she couldn’t speak with total authority on the subject.

“I mean, there’s a saying: ‘All cats are gray in the dark,’ ” she teased.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner in 2005. J. Merritt/FilmMagic

Madison, who was in a relationship with Hefner from 2001 to 2008, has been open in the past about being pressured to partake in sex with Hefner, especially in group scenarios with the other women. 

While speaking with PEOPLE in March about her true crime series Lethally Blonde, which focuses on telling the stories of victims in the adult entertainment industry, she recalled some of the strangest things she saw around the Playboy Mansion.

“They would have these trays everywhere, like in every bathroom, out on the tennis courts, by the pool, and it would be a tray with Kleenex, Pepto Bismol, Vaseline, baby oil, sunscreen — any kind of makeshift lube,” she said. “It was weird.”

“My experiences that played with the negative parts of it are more related to the relationship and the relationship dynamics, both with Hef and some of the other girls,” Madison added. “I 100 percent enjoyed posing for the magazine. I was always a fan of the pictorials. I always wanted to be in Playboy. And I even worked at the studio producing the playmate pictorials for a couple of years, and that was a super fun experience. So, it’s very multifaceted for me.”