Love Thy Neighbor

Gala premieres and celebratory cast-and-crew screenings are commonplace in Hollywood, but few advance screenings are as intriguing or enticing as the one that takes place every time a new episode of The Girls Next Door arrives at the Playboy Mansion, Playboy editor-in-chief Hugh M. Hefner takes the disc upstairs to his bedroom, plops down on the bed with three young women who also happen to be the stars of the show and settles in for a private viewing party.

For the next half hour Hef and his girlfriends---Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt---watch their adventures in Hef's wonderland, showcased each week on the reality series that became this past year's biggest hit on E! Entertainment Television. No show quite like it has ever aired in the long history of the medium. It provides a look inside the life Hef has created from his dreams and fantasies, as seen through the eyes of the three young women who share that unique life. The Girls Next Door, which kicks off its second season this month, has acquired a rabid following and made stars of its three leading ladies, and when it's shown upstairs at the Mansion, those stars are apt to view their on-screen exploits with occasional cringing---but mostly with love and laughter.

Then again, if you've been watching, you have a good idea of what those private viewing parties are like. You've been inside the Mansion, up the stairs, in Hef's bedroom. You've gotten to know Holly, the number one girlfriend, who has been with Hef for five years. And Bridget, the northern California broadcast journalism graduate student who has wanted to be in Playboy since she was four years old. And Kendra, the free-spirited sports fanatic from San Diego who, at 21, is the youngest of the girlfriends. You've seen their parties, their moods both good and bad, and their place in the often misunderstood world behind the Playboy Mansion gates.

"I think the show has rather decidedly changed people's views of my life in the Mansion," says Hef. "It has had a remarkably humanizing effect on the way people look at me, the girls and our lives." According to all concerned, the show has also helped bring (text concluded on page 149)Girls Next Door(continued from page 114) the girls together. "We have very different interests," says Holly, "but the show gives us common goals and things to do together." Adds Bridget, "It's made us focus on what we need to do as a team.

Hef, who turned down dozens of offers for a Playboy-themed reality series before agreeing to do this one with executive producer, award-winning documentary filmmaker and longtime friend Kevin Burns, wasn't initially convinced the show would have such a salutary effect on his girlfriends. "One of my concerns going in was that we were importing something new into the relationship," Hef says. "Anytime you do that, you wonder how it'll turn out. I had reservations, and so did Holly. But I think everyone was surprised that it's as much fun as it is."

Another surprise: More than half the show's audience is female. "We knew it would be appealing to men," says Hef, "but it has also established a cultlike following among women." One female fan from Florida went so far as to fly to Los Angeles to have her hair done at the José Eber salon in Beverly Hills simply because that's where the girls go; she lucked out and got to meet Holly, who was there at the time. "I get a lot of comments about the show," Holly says. "One thing people say a lot is 'You and Hef are so cute together,' which is something they would never believe if they didn't see it for themselves."

The second season of The Girls Next Door arrives on the heels of the DVD release of the first 15 episodes and begins with a show documenting preparations for Hef's 80th birthday festivities. But one wild weekend does not a proper Playboy celebration make, so Hef and the girls turned the party into a moveable feast, touring Europe for a whirlwind two-week, five-country jaunt with cameras in tow. Holly liked Paris the best (particularly the catacombs), Bridget fell in love with Italy, and Kendra now wants to live in Cannes or St.-Tropez. "All the hot people and the big-ass parties were there," she says. "I felt like, This is where I belong." In fact, she admits, she wound up in "a really bad mood" when the group had to leave Cannes after less than a day. "I was so mad, and I'm sure that'll wind up in the show," she laughs.

Fans of the show will notice something different about the second season: the girls' newfound fame, which has led to roles in Scary Movie 4, an upcoming 2007 calendar and talk of a book and a line of clothing and fragrances. "The girls have become almost overnight celebrities," says Hef, "and we talked about whether that should be shown. In the end we decided it's part of their lives and we should show it."

For Holly, though, the highlight of the new season may be its documentation of the photo shoots that appear in this issue of Playboy. "Our shoots just keep getting better," she says. "The first pictorial was a lot of fun, the calendar was more fun, and this new one was just amazing." Each of Hef's girls was given the chance to come up with her own glamour theme. The front-and-back cover, meanwhile, is a Playboy first---as is the technique used for the two shots, which were taken at exactly the same instant. "It was one of the most complicated things I've ever done," says photographer Arny Freytag. "Because both shots had to be taken at the same time, I couldn't move from the front to the back to shoot both of them. So we put up a video screen underneath me so I could monitor the back view as I was shooting from the front."

Now the Girls Next Door are back in these pages, back on TV, back living a lifestyle in which every party, outing or private moment just may be next week's nationwide entertainment. And from the look of things, they don't mind one bit. "Sometimes the filming gets old," admits Bridget, "but by the time the first season was over, I found I enjoyed having the cameras around. After we finished, I thought, Where are all my friends who follow me everywhere? Where's my entourage?" She laughs. "Be careful what you wish for, because now I have them back."