Former Playboy Playmate Lauren Anderson on her first nude photoshoot

Former Playboy Playmate Lauren Anderson blacked out at her first nude photoshoot for the brand

“I actually blacked out. I wanted to be really skinny, and I hadn’t eaten anything,” she told The Post. “Fortunately, the makeup people were all there and kind of caught me before I actually fainted.”

The Milwaukee native’s dizzying experience came after she was cast in the brand’s 2002 reality show “Girl Next Door: The Search for a Playboy Centerfold,” in which 12 women competed to become Playmate of the Month.

The show required the final six contestants to pose naked, which led to the scary moment.

She ended up winning the competition, and was on the cover of Playboy’s July 2002 issue and earned $25,000.

Anderson, now 43, is featured on the A&E docuseries “Secrets of Playboy,” which premieres its Season 2 on Monday. She was a senior at the University of Florida when she auditioned for her first gig with the magazine, posing topless for the 2001 “Girls of the SEC” issue.

“I kind of went as a joke just to kind of see what it was all about and they selected me … even though I said I wouldn’t do fully nude,” said Anderson, who worked for Playboy until 2012. .

On the docuseries, the blonde beauty, who described herself back then as “shy” and “not a party girl,” is seen rewatching a segment of “Girl Next Door” where she is posing on all fours — which she now called cringeworthy.

“I know how insecure I was and how I was feeling at the time and that wasn’t who I was, being sexy and wearing sexy clothes,” she explained.

“And so it just kind of makes me cringe,” she admitted. “But I wouldn’t change a thing because it turned me into who I am now, which is a very confident person and I embrace my body and all its flaws and before I didn’t do that, I covered it up.”

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told her she set herself apart from all the other Playmates.

“My mom always taught me to write thank you notes, so I actually wrote him a thank you note, thanking him for selecting me the winner of the show and when I went back to L.A. and saw him, he told me no Playmate had ever done that,” she explained.

After “Girl Next Door,” Anderson dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career with Playboy, doing jobs like hosting parties and benefits and conducting tours of the Playboy Mansion, which she said had this lavish amenity.

“You could order food 24 hours a day and they would make you whatever you wanted,” she remembered.

She was introduced to her husband, former MLB player Reid Brignac — who had a short stint with the Yankees among other teams — at a Playboy party, and the pair now have two sons, ages 11 and 6.

“He was told, ‘Oh, there’s this Playboy Playmate here that you should meet,’ and I was told, ‘There’s this professional baseball player that you should meet,’” she said.

She dispelled the rumor that the house was full of older men.

“That’s not the case at all. A lot of young Hollywood was there,” said Anderson, who didn’t give any notable names, except for one, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“I met him and it was like, ‘Holy moley! You’re like, biggest person I’ve ever seen!’” she said.

One of the topics addressed in the docuseries is the women of Playboy finding their photos on porn sites, which has happened to Anderson.

“It doesn’t overly bother me. I never did any porn. I was never sexually active with anybody on film, so it’s really just showing your naked body, which, I did that,” she explained.

Anderson, who proudly includes “former Playboy Playmate” on her social media profiles, said the worst part about her old job is that complete strangers call her a “whore” and a “bimbo.”

“If I have anything to say, any kind of voice at all on anything, whether it be politics or anything that’s happening … that’s the first thing people come back to,” she said. “That I’m slutty, a whore, I’m stupid, I’m a bimbo.”

“That’s the worst part about Playboy for me, is the way society treats us.”

She stopped working for Playboy after she had her first child, now 11.

Although she hasn’t yet explained her former career to her oldest son, he did see one of her photos, while she was signing it for a fan.

“I was not actually nude, I was covering myself,” she said. “And he looked at it and he was like, ‘Mom!’ … with this disgusted, baffled look on his face. ‘Why are you only wearing one earring?’”