It was only four years ago that Brande Roderick loaded her belongings into a rented Ryder truck, waved goodbye to her family, left the idyllic wine country of California and headed south--bound for Hollywood and, she hoped, for glory. Since then, she has slept on friends' couches, borrowed cars, taken acting classes, struggled to find work and watched her struggles pay off. There were acting jobs on shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and appearances in national commercials. There was the evening she went out dancing and was invited to join Playboy Editor-in-Chief Hugh M. Hefner at his table. There were the months she spent living in the Playboy Mansion with Hef, Sandy and Mandy Bentley and Jessica Paisley. There was her Playmate of the Month pictorial in April 2000 and her season-long stint on Baywatch Hawaii.
And now, to cap it off, Brande Nicole Roderick is Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 2001. "I have to laugh about it," she says. "I didn't have a car, I didn't have a job, I was sleeping on people's couches. When I think about where I am now, I can't believe where I started."
These days, of course, the focus is on where Brande is going. Already, her Playmate of the Year reign is off to a splashy start: She and Hef were featured on the hit comedy Just Shoot Me, announcing Brande's title and playing themselves in a fantasy scenario at the fashion magazine where the likes of David Spade and Laura San Giacomo work. "The show had Hef and me taking over the company," she says with a smile. "Basically, it was Laura's worst nightmare."
It doesn't sound like a nightmare to us--but the show was certainly an appropriate way to kick things off for a young woman (Brande turns 27 this month) who's been showing up on TV a lot lately, from Baywatch Hawaii to the news programs that lavished attention on her when she became involved with Playboy's founder just as Hef was reclaiming his title as the king of nightlife. "I learned a lot in that period of time," she says fondly.
"Now," she reports, "everything's falling into place." Brande has a new house that she and her cocker spaniel, Mercedes, share with fellow Baywatch alum Stacy Kamano. Her younger brother is about to make her an aunt for the first time, which thrills her. And she has great plans for her Playmate of the Year reign (lots of charity work for the City of Hope) and her career. "I want to have my own TV show," she says. "Probably another drama. I want to do a sitcom. Feature films. Radio. Theater. I have all these different ideas for logos and merchandise. I want to do it all."
She laughs; only four years after packing that truck and taking one big risk, Brande Roderick is eager to take lots more. "It seems as if there's not even enough time in a lifetime to do all the things that I want to do," she says. "But I'm working on it."
There's more brande at Playboy.com/current and much more for members at cyber. Playboy.com.
