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Hugh Hefner’s Playboy has for a long time been sold as the thing that “jump-started the sexual revolution” or something to that effect.

While that might have been true for the late pipe-smoking, gown-wearing perpetual bachelor and the like, it wasn’t always the case for his blonde bunnies.

Times have changed dramatically since 1953, and Hefner’s legacy is glaringly controversial and problematic.

In fact, A&E Network’s Secrets of Playboy docuseries is revealing the darker side behind the mansion’s glossy, sexy life with one former Playboy bunny claiming it was “dangerous.”

Entertainment Weekly has more:

According to a press release on Secrets of Playboy, behind Playboy’s “glossy facade” was a “more sinister reality” that allowed for decades of “nefarious conduct including sexual assault and drug abuse to flourish, and where prostitution, suicide and even murder lurked in the shadows.”

The series will explore how the Playboy “machine was a powerful force that, at its worst, manipulated women in a toxic environment, silencing their voices, pitting them against one another, and opening the door to sexual predators.”

Here’s the trailer:

In one of the sneak peek videos released on A&E’s YouTube channel, Holly Madison, who dated Hefner from 2001 to 2008, describes how Hefner treated and controlled her every move:

In another clip, Hefner’s former girlfriend Sondra Theodore and executive assistant Lisa Loving Barrett talk frankly about the “leg-spreading” drugs being used at the Playboy Mansion:

A third clip sees a couple of Playboy personnel reflecting on the freedoms and opportunities that the Playboy world offered young women:

That’s all for now.

If you want more, you’ll have to wait for the 10-hour docuseries to premiere on January 24, 2022.

[source:entertainmentweekly]