Los Angeles, Jan 21 (IANS): The 'Girls Next Door' star Holly Madison dated Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017 aged 91, from 2001 and 2008 and has revealed how "isolated from the outside world" she and her fellow Playboy Bunnies were.

The 42-year-old model also shared that the girls were only allowed to leave the legendary Los Angeles pad for special reasons and were told not to invite friends over, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

In a preview of the upcoming A&E documentary series 'Secrets of Playboy', she spilled: "The reason I think the mansion was very cult-like, looking back on it, is because we were all kind of gaslit and expected to think of Hef as, like, this really good guy.

"You started to feel like, 'Oh, he's not what they say in the media, he's just a nice man.'"

She added: "Another thing that reminds me of a cult is how it was so easy to get isolated from the outside world there. You had a 9 o'clock curfew, you were encouraged to not have friends over.

"You weren't really allowed to leave unless it was, like, a family holiday."

"Secrets of Playboy" is a 10-part series and premieres on January 24.

It will also feature an interview with former 'Bunny Mother' PJ Masten and promises to expose the "hidden truths" behind Hugh's empire.

Holly recently claimed Hugh was "literally pushed on top" of her on their first date.

She initially agreed to go out with him when there was a "spot open" after one of his girlfriends left the Playboy Mansion, and although she wasn't expecting a "very traditional" first date, she thought she'd be given an introduction into life with the media mogul rather than being pushed into anything.

She recalled: "I didn't really know what went on with them sexually. I figured something, and I was prepared for that. I wasn't prepared for what would eventually happen.

"I wasn't necessarily expecting to have sex that night. I thought it would be more of a first date.

"I thought it would be more of a type of thing where I saw what happened, saw what was going on, [and] if I wasn't comfortable with it, I wouldn't have to do anything."

However, things moved far quicker than Holly expected and the "Vegas Diaries" star was left "mortified and embarrassed" by the events of their first date.

She recalled: "He was literally pushed on top of me. And after it happened, I was just mortified and embarrassed and it had way more of an emotional impact on me than I thought it would...

"It wasn't that the idea of possibly having sex with him repelled me so much. It was more the group aspect that was really out of my comfort zone and just the feeling of like, 'Wow. That happened. Everybody knows it happened.'

"All of a sudden it felt like everybody was going to know about me and I was horrified by it."