Marla Maples never had any interest in posing nude, but Donald Trump reportedly wanted her to. It wasn’t just a casual wish, either. When Playboy approached Maples with a $1 million offer in 1990, it was her then-lover who reportedly helped the magazine arrive at the number. “Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee,” a former Playboy editor told Glenn Plaskin of the New York Daily News. “He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn’t.”
Maples remained steadfast in her beliefs. “I’m thankful for my body, but I didn’t want to exploit it,” Maples said. “How would I ever be taken seriously?” That wasn’t the first time Playboy had gone after Maples. The magazine had been interested in featuring her since she was 16 — when they asked her and her mother to pose together. Because she wasn’t of age, Maples would have needed permission. And even back then, there was a man trying to pressure her into posing.
Read Related Also: Giants’ Saquon Barkley out again vs. Dolphins despite optimism
“My dad was saying just go for it, what the heck,” she said in the Vanity Fair interview. Maples didn’t cave. “Even then I knew that wasn’t the way I wanted to be represented.” That remained true, and no nude photoshoots of Maples were ever published. “It’s been very hard to break the mold, and posing in Playboy would have locked it into cement,” she told Plaskin for Tribune Media Services in August 1990.
