Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt on Their New Podcast, Girls Next Level
Q&A with Podcasting’s New Girls Next Door
For many young women in the early 2000s, The Girls Next Door became an essential part of a reality TV diet when it first aired on the E! Network. While the show represented true escapism at its best, there was also something relatable about these women who lived this unusual lifestyle.
But what was really happening behind the scenes? Was this life as glamorous as it seemed?
Enter Girls Next Level, the podcast hosted by Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt that’s bringing the real story to light.
Since debuting in August 2022, The show has become a huge hit among long-time fans of Holly and Bridget, but it’s also resonating with a new generation of women who are being introduced to the reality series for the first time.
In just a few short weeks, the podcast topped the Apple Podcast charts at #1 and surpassed 2 million downloads. The show has been featured in BuzzFeed, Us Weekly, and In Touch and has generated thousands of 5-star reviews.
Girls Next Level taps into the nostalgia trend, joining the ranks of other popular podcasts that revisit our favorite reality shows from the past. But Holly and Bridget have set out to create a podcast that is more than a re-watch, digging deep into how their experience impacted their lives and bringing the now problematic glamorization of Playboy back into the conversation.
These honest and raw conversations are balanced by the best friend energy Holly and Bridget bring every week. They have been through a lot together, and have no shortage of hilarious and relatable moments to share with listeners too.
Since the conversations happening in this show have so much nuance to them, we wanted to give the hosts more space to share how Girls Next Level came to be and why sharing these stories today is so important. Here are Holly and Bridget answering some burning questions.
AdLarge Podcast Network: First of all, congratulations on the success of your show! Were you expecting this response from your fans?
Holly Madison: I was never expecting so many downloads so quickly! The response has absolutely blown me away and I’m so thrilled we are connecting with our audience.
Bridget Marquardt: Thanks so much! I knew we used to have a lot of fans but I had no idea how much people still cared and wanted to know more! The response from the fans has been amazing, truly positive, and loving. The outpouring of support and encouragement was very overwhelming at first, in a good way, but it has been incredible.
APN: For those who aren’t familiar with Girls Next Level, can you tell us what it’s about?
BM: Simply put, Girls next Level is a re-watch and breakdown of every episode of our show The Girls Next Door, which aired on E! From 2005-2009, chronicling our lives at the Playboy Mansion.
HM: It’s also about so much more. We cover our lives before the show, relatable issues, and talk about our lives currently. We can’t wait to see how the show continues to evolve, too.
BM: We talk about how we got there in the first place, things that were going on behind the scenes, and go deeper into topics such as body image, beauty standards, feeling dependent, transactional relationships, and so much more.
APN: The stories you’ve shared so far are pretty incredible. What led to the decision that you two should talk about your experiences on a podcast together?
HM: I started reacting to old Girls Next Door episodes on my YouTube channel at the request of subscribers. It was hard at first, but I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. I was constantly sending Bridget voice messages asking her if she remembered or realized certain things looking back. Of course, my subscribers were requesting I bring Bridget on the channel, but I thought, this really needs to be a podcast. You are so restricted on YouTube if you want to keep your channel up and monetized, and I wanted us to be able to talk about anything, no matter how deep or shocking.
BM: Holly was already doing YouTube recaps of the episodes and asked me if I would be interested in doing a deep dive into each episode with her in a podcast format. I have rarely discussed my feelings about my life at the mansion publicly, in fact, I have written a book that I never fully finished or published. I decided that it was a good opportunity to finally talk about my story. Holly and I often reminisce and analyze our time at the mansion on our own and felt the fans might like to hear those discussions too.
APN: Looking back at The Girls Next Door series and how media portrayed women in the early ‘00s in general, why was it important for you two to tell these stories now?
HM: I think truth is important and I want people to know just how easy it is to manipulate and present something as not how it seems through television. I personally have been continually frustrated at different moments through my life when I’ve been confronted with how viewers think I really am the character they portrayed me as on TV. For example, I wasn’t just sitting around the mansion freeloading, I was in school for real estate investment, I volunteered as a tour guide and at the ASPCA, etc; but you would never know that watching the show because they deliberately left those things out.
BM: The portrayal of women in the early ’00s is, in many ways, different from the way women are portrayed today. We like pointing these things out and talking about how some things would no longer be acceptable today. But as much as things have changed there are still a lot of things that have stayed the same, possibly even worse, with the advent of social media, face filters, and photoshop. I think that makes the podcast even more relatable to women today than ever before.
APN: When people hear ‘Playboy’ they probably make a lot of assumptions. What do you want the audience to take away when they listen to the podcast?
HM: I want people to realize that there was so much more to the story. People tend to want things to be black or white but our experiences weren’t that simple. I look back on my time there and while I remember being miserable most of the time, there were also positive experiences over the seven years I was there and good memories, too. On the other hand, Bridget had a mostly positive experience but witnessed some not-so-great things as well. I want this podcast to cover it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I love opening people’s minds to nuance and duality.
BM: I think the biggest takeaway from this podcast is that there are a lot of things that people think they “know” about Playboy, Hef, the Mansion, and even our show The Girls Next Door, but things aren’t always how they seem or even what you might think and the experiences and perceptions vary greatly among the women that lived, posed and made Playboy a part of their lives. Even Holly and I have different perspectives about the time that we shared at the mansion. Everybody’s story is valid and should be heard.
Thanks to Holly and Bridget for sharing—the passion they have for this podcast shows. Holly and Bridget have created a safe space for their fans to revisit, reanalyze, and reminisce, and it’s clear that their podcast is resonating with listeners. This is the type of content that really shines in podcasting’s intimate environment.