Jenny McCarthy Recalls Seeing Playboy Mansion Sex with ‘Gross Celebrities’: ‘It Was Like Viagra Central’

Jenny McCarthy is shedding some light on her days in the Playboy Mansion.

McCarthy, 51, first posed for Playboy when she was just 22 years old in 1993, and during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live on Monday, she reflected on some of the unusual — and uncomfortable — sights she took in during her time as part of Hugh Hefner’s infamous inner circle. 

“I was there when his kids were throwing bacon at me in high chairs. It was the perfect time,” she said of the era when she was living in the mansion, which was during Hefner’s marriage to Kimberley Conrad.

“There was that big Playboy scandal TV special, they asked me to be part of it constantly. I’m like, ‘Listen, I didn’t have that experience. Pamela [Anderson] didn’t have that experience.’ We were at a different time, I think,” she said.

Despite feeling like she wasn’t subjected to quite as much as other Playboy alums were, McCarthy told host Andy Cohen: “There was so much, still, sex going on with gross celebrities in the grotto areas and stuff like that.”

McCarthy said she got a glimpse of the happenings during the mansion’s infamous parties, where “there were only hot women and the ugliest dudes.”

“Unfortunately, for every 20 guys, it was 1 girl. So the guys were just in heaven. But also the guys were over 70 years old,” she recalled. “Oh God, they were like, really, really old. It was like viagra central.”

McCarthy teased that “some day” she’d “maybe tell the funny stories of it all,” as she remembered women “hunting for Hef in the middle of the night while he was married.”

“I’d be like, ‘What are you doing? Stop it,'” she recalled.

The Masked Singer judge also reflected on how she got her start at Playboy — which resulted from a simple “ask” after going to the brand’s building in Chicago.

“I said, ‘How do people become Playmates?’ They go, ‘They don’t walk in. You have to send a photo.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, 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.

“And I said, ‘Okay’ — this is a true story — and I thought, ‘I didn’t shave. Like, this is bad.’ Because I didn’t think — I was just going to get information. So I went and put on my bathing suit and I went to the photographer and literally they were like, ‘Pose’ — I did like a mugshot,” she recalled. “Then I took the bus home. By the time I got home, there was a voicemail on my answering machine that said, ‘We want to test you for Miss October.’”

While she looks back at some of the events associated with her time at the Playboy mansion sans rose-colored glasses, McCarthy has credited Hefner, who died at age 91 in 2017, for giving her “the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“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 on SiriusXM’s The Jenny McCarthy Show the day after Hefner died. “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.”

“It was the thing that made me who I am today,” she continued. “[And Hef] was always supportive, always proud. Whenever I would see him he would always say, ‘You’re doing such a good job.’ I hope I did. I hope I did make him proud.”

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Since Hefner’s death, his past sexual encounters with his former Playmates have come to be heavily criticized. Several women spoke out about their experiences in detail on A&E’s Secrets of Playboy, which explored the controversial history of the Playboy founder over the years.

In a statement shared with PEOPLE ahead of the docuseries’ release in 2022, the magazine denounced Hugh’s alleged “abhorrent actions” and detailed a commitment to “positive change” under new leadership which “no longer associates” with the Hefner family.