Former Girl Next Door Holly Madison Jumps Into Reality — Again

It’s hardly a secret that Hugh Hefner likes his women blonde, busty and — unfortunately for former serious girlfriend Holly Madison — a couple of years beyond jailbait. So it came to pass that the then 29-year-old Madison, star of the long running reality series The Girls Next Door, left the Playboy Mansion, her dream of becoming the next Mrs. Hef, and her employment as an intern with Playboy Magazine and headed east to Las Vegas to headline the sexy burlesque review Peepshow.

Now she also stars in an E! reality series, Holly’s World, airing Sundays. It looks at her new life in Vegas, including her work in local politics and on the show. Friends and former roommates Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt, who starred with her in The Girls Next Door, also put in appearances, helping her adjust to her new life.

Not that adjusting has been too difficult. Raised in a small community in Alaska and coming of age in Oregon and Los Angeles, she finds the Vegas community welcoming. “It’s like a small town amongst the locals,” she says.

“[Holly’s World] is a really fun show about young people in Las Vegas trying to make their lives happen — all the reality and the drama,” she says. “It’s a spinoff of when I got my job doing the burlesque show.”

The cameras follow her everywhere 24-hours a day, but she is used to that sort of scrutiny from her work on The Girls Next Door. But along with segments on her taking a road trip with friends or having fun in the town that never sleeps, there was work involved.

“[Viewers] might be surprised to see how busy I keep myself,” she says. “When people come and see Peepshow, they love it. But it’s definitely a show I work hard at. I’m on six nights a week. There’s dance numbers. It’s not like a Pussycat Dolls Las Vegas sort of thing, where they hire someone to come on and do some nonexistent routine in a champagne glass. I don’t just get drunk and show up. It’s not a club appearance; it’s a full-time job.”

But does the former college student, who was discovered while waiting tables at a Hooters to pay for her college tuition (she was pursuing degrees in theater arts and psychology), have any regrets about her life?

“I love everything about the way my life has turned out. I just wish I had achieved everything I’d achieved and know what I know now when I was five years younger. I feel that I just want to do more. I want to do it all. I want to do more in my career and settle down and have kids. There’s just so much I want to do.”