We feel that we owe Lindsay Lohan an apology. We’ll stand by all the articles and photo galleries and off-the-record comments about her various knife-related photo shoots, of course. (No regrets.) Still, ever since details of her Playboy pictorial surfaced — never mind the much-Googled photos themselves — we've been suggesting dear LiLo is as unimaginative as a Love Bug remake. A Marilyn Monroe tribute? Been there, seen that -- and your naked butt.
But it turns out the screen bombshell shtick wasn't Lohan's idea at all, and Playboy's founder Hugh Hefner has come forward to claim full responsibility, telling E! News he was the one who pitched the concept. We'd aim some snark his way, but if there's one rule we've lived by ever since being chased through the park by an old man with a dead squirrel on a stick, never pick a fight with an 85-year-old wearing a housecoat and a captain's hat.
As you may recall, Lohan's first Playboy photoshoot was reportedly thrown out by the magazine. That's all true, Hef told E!. As he explained to the outlet, that initial batch of semi-nude pictures wasn't up to the magazine's standards, so he made a few suggestions that resulted in the Marilyn-inspired pictures featuring mysterious armpit airbrushing that you've been gawking at since last week.
"The pictorial and the concept for the pictorial came from me," Hefner told E!. "She had done semi-nudes before. I wanted to do something that would be memorable. So what is more natural, since she is a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe, than do something that is a tribute to the red-velvet, Tom Kelley photo shot of Marilyn Monroe that was our very first Playmate?"
According to Hefner, Lohan was initially hesitant to go completely nude for the million-dollar assignment. "I think it was essentially mama and the folks around her that kept pushing for less nudity," he said. "And I said, 'We're doing a nude pictorial here. We're going to do it in a very classy way and we're going to do it in a way which it will not be forgotten."
That said, Hefner admitted to E! that he wasn't initially sold on the idea of a Lohan as a bunny. The magazine's editors ran the idea by him, and Hefner says, "It really came a a surprise to me. ... I kind of had mixed emotions about it initially, and then it turned into something bigger than life."He continued: "I wasn't quite sure where she was at in her life, obviously," he said.