Jenny McCarthy is getting real about her time at the Playboy Mansion.
During a recent appearance on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen," McCarthy recalled her days as a Playboy Bunny in the early 1990s, and shared a few of the things she saw at some of the mansion's biggest parties.
"There was so much... sex going on with gross celebrities in the grotto areas," she shared. "For every 20 guys, there was, like, one girl. So, the guys were in heaven. But also, the guys were, like, over 70 years old... There was only hot women and the ugliest dudes...I t was like Viagra central."
While McCarthy acknowledged the experiences many Playmates had were not positive, she explains she was at the mansion at "the perfect time." McCarthy was there during Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner's, marriage to Kimberley Conrad, joking, "I was there when his kids were throwing bacon at me in high chairs."
The contrast between her experience and the experience of other Playboy Playmates, is part of the reason McCarthy chose not to participate in the A&E documentary "Secrets of Playboy" in 2022, despite saying, "They asked me to be a part of it constantly."
"I’m like, ‘Listen, I didn’t have that experience.’ Pamela [Anderson] didn’t have that experience," she shared. Back when the docuseries was first released, she appeared on the "#NoFilter With Zack Peter" podcast, saying while she didn't have those experiences, her "heart broke for a lot of these women," in the show.
"I have three sisters, and when I’m publicly telling my stories of childhood, some of them will call me and [ask], ‘What house were you raised in?’" she said on the podcast in August 2022. "Each one of them have a whole point of view and perception. That’s the analogy I would use with Playmates. Yeah, we were in the same house. We all didn’t experience the same s---."
McCarthy first posed for the magazine at the age of 22, in October 1993. The model was named Playmate of the Month for that cover, and just a year later, she was named Playmate of the Year in 1994.
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McCarthy's journey to becoming a Playboy model, included McCarthy visiting the Playboy offices in Chicago, and simply asking how she could get into the magazine.
"I said, ‘How do people become Playmates?’ They go, ‘They don’t walk in. You have to send a photo.’ And I was like, ‘All right, bye.’ I was waiting for the elevator and the editor walked by, and he said, ‘We have a photoshoot going on. Do you want to throw on a bikini?’" she recounted on "Watch What Happens Live."
Despite feeling unprepared, McCarthy agreed to the photoshoot, telling Cohen she hadn't even shaved because she thought she "was just going to get information." After taking a series of photos, which she compared to "a mugshot," she went home, saying, "By the time I got home, there was a voicemail on my answering machine that said, ‘We want to test you for Miss October.’"
Hefner passed away in 2017, at the age of 91. At the time, McCarthy paid tribute to him on her Sirius XM radio show, "The Jenny McCarthy Show," crediting Hefner for changing her life, saying he "was always supportive [and] always proud."
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"There’s always those people in your life that change the course of your life, and I think about how many people he affected just through me alone," McCarthy said. "Giving me the opportunity to move my parents out of a bad neighborhood and into a good neighborhood, pay off their debts, pay off my college loan, move to Los Angeles so I could pursue my dream."
