'I Didn't Have Any Emotional Attachment to Him': Hugh Hefner's Former Girlfriend Holly Madison Defends Decision to Ignore His Death

Holly Madison explained why she didn’t memorialize Hugh Hefner after he died in 2017.

The former girlfriend of the publisher and ex-Playmate, recently divulged that she did not feel the need to publicly mourn the Playboy founder after he passed of sepsis at age 91.

“When he passed away, everybody expected me to have some big reaction or post about it on social media, and it just felt weird,” Madison recalled. “I didn’t have any emotional attachment to him anymore in any way.”

After Madison’s seven-year relationship with Hefner ended, she was very vocal about the emotional and sexual abuse she allegedly experienced while with the entrepreneur. The blonde beauty even wrote a book called “Down the Rabbit Hole,” which was released in 2015, where she detailed the romance.

“I’d already come out talking about what a toxic relationship this was for me,” she added. “Why am I supposed to post a memorial on my Instagram?”

As OK! previously reported, in an interview from October, Madison discussed how she was not dating Hefner to take advantage of his fame and fortune, instead he always had the power in the relationship.

"There was this odd idea that I think a lot of people had back then that Hef was this helpless old man who was just looking for love and anybody involved with him was coming in and taking advantage," the 43-year-old stated. "Which wasn’t really the case when I was there."

Madison, who dated Hefner from 2001-2008, explained that he ran a strict household.

"Going into Girls Next Door, on the very first day, I just knew they were going to try to shape me a certain way or start drama or embarrass me. I was always so scared being in front of the camera and so worried about what I was going to say," she admitted. "I was also worried like, ‘Am I going to get in trouble with Hef at the mansion?’"

"I didn’t feel like I could ever really be myself in front of the camera until I started doing YouTube during quarantine," she added. "That’s the first time I felt like I could like look at a camera and connect with people on the other end."

After exposing Hefner and the mansion for all of the misogyny and toxicity she experienced, the mother-of-two shared that she felt a lot lighter.

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"I’m just so tired of having to be fake. Anytime somebody approaches me, which was like every day of my life, people would ask, ‘Oh, do you miss the Mansion?’ and I would always say nice things just because I don't want to get into it with strangers, necessarily," she said. "And because I just thought that was the nice thing to do. This gets to a point where it starts to make you physically ill when you're just living a lie like that."

People interviewed Madison.