Trivia / The Playboy Club

• Banned in China: KSL-TV, the LDS Church-owned NBC station in Salt Lake City, Utah, shunned the show, leading NBC to dump it in the hands of the local MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYU. It (along with other commercial media outlets owned by the Church) promotes an education campaign against porn addiction, so obviously it didn't want to associate itself with anything Playboy-related.
• The Danza: Sean Maher plays Sean Beasley.
• Dueling Works: With Pan Am; neither lasted very long, though Pan Am "won" by lasting a whole season.
• Follow the Leader: This was NBC's attempt to create their own version of Mad Men and even ABC's Pan Am.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: NBC quickly and quietly swept the show under the rug without any home media release. The only way to seek out the show (Bile Fascination or not) would be through torrents of ripped episodes.
• The Other Marty: A subversion. Jeff Hephner was originally cast in the role of Nick Dalton after performing well in test auditions, and while he did not shoot any scenes, he made it as far as the full cast table before the producers decided to let him go, as the actor had no experience playing a television lead before. Eddie Cibrian was cast just a few days before filming began, and had to commute from his Los Angeles home to the set in Chicago for filming.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Sean Beasley, a closeted gay man, is played by Sean Maher, who himself was closeted before taking the role, and publicly came out as the show aired because he felt the series was a good platform to openly discuss his sexuality and encourage public discourse about the issue.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Amber Heard had a lot of buzz about her movie career after her roles in Never Back Down and Pineapple Express, reaching its height when she played the female lead opposite Nicolas Cage in Drive Angry, and beat several actresses for the role of Johnny Depp's Love Interest in The Rum Diary. Then she starred in The Playboy Club, which turned out to be a colossal flop (and The Rum Diary flopped at the box office), and her buzz was all but killed overnight. Heard's next few films like Paranoia and 3 Days to Kill were critical and box office letdowns, and paired with her messy divorce from Depp, it seems most likely that her career won't reach new heights after that, with her only reprieve in the meantime having been joining the DCEU as Mera in Aquaman.
  • ABC threw Eddie Cibrian in every single "beefcake Latin Lover" role they could think of for a three-year period, including Ugly Betty and the failed pilot Football Wives. In Ugly Betty the near universal fan reaction when he was paired up with Betty's sister was "anyone but him". Then he was in Season 8 of CSI: Miami where he did nothing memorable. Then his personal life became public when his affair and eventual tabloid-ready marriage with LeAnn Rimes was dredged up (we also have him to blame for his ex-wife and mistress becoming Real Housewives regulars). It was in the aftermath of this that he was cast in The Playboy Club, and his derided role there assured that he was poison and his star burned out quickly; everything he's done since then has been C-level cable network work, and his 2014 VH1 reality series with his wife saw substandard ratings which should make sure he never sees a major television role again.
  • This series was Leah Renee Cudmore's attempt to break into a mainstream career. When it flopped, she went back to her career in Canada and has mostly been in run-of-the-mill television movies since.

---