Holly Madison is best known for her time as a Playboy bunny and starring in the reality series Girls Next Door, and now, she’s saying it was her undiagnosed autism that may have led her there. In a new interview, Holly opened up about being diagnosed with autism later in her life, and how it affected her social behaviors long before she found out.
She felt like her autism made it easier for her to “fall in love” with Hugh Hefner.
While talking to Page Six this week, Holly said she believes her autism — which was undiagnosed at the time — is what made her fall in love with a man who was 50 years older than her.
“I feel like having the difficulty I did connecting with people for so long made me feel like when I was meeting somebody who was older and more experienced and maybe a little bit better at manipulating people, I thought, ‘Oh, wow, maybe I’m meant to be with an older man,” she said. “Maybe this is what it is.’ It just felt like love.”
She doesn’t have any regrets, though.
Looking back, Holly wouldn’t change anything, but she did say that if she had known she was autistic then, she might have “handled myself a little differently.
“It definitely sheds some light on where my feelings were at and my motivations and why I had certain impressions about things,” she added.
Holly already said she felt like she didn’t fit in.
In the interview, Holly said she was always aware that she had “certain social difficulties and difficulties relating to people,” but always thought it was because she’d been raised in a remote town in Alaska. It wasn’t until her ex-husband, Pasquale Rotella, pushed her to find out what was going on that she was eventually able to learn the truth.
She was 42 when she was diagnosed.
In 2023, Holly opened up about her diagnosis on the Talking to Death podcast.
“The doctor told me that I have high executive functioning, which means I can pretty much go about my life and do things ‘normally,’” she said.
“I think because I’m more quiet, I’ve only recently learned to make eye contact, I’m often in my own thoughts, things like that, so people take that as offensive. They’re like, ‘Damn, you’re not super interested in me, f— you,’” Holly said. “Like, I’m just not on the same social wavelength as other people but don’t take it personally. So I like being able to explain that.”
