Lisa Rinna's New Playboy Nudes Make a Statement, Says Husband

Arriving on newsstands this Friday, the May 2009 issue of Playboy features former Melrose Place resident and Dancing star Lisa Rinna on its cover as well as inside, in a nude pictorial described as groundbreaking by her husband.

"The editors told Lisa that they haven't had photographs in the magazine like this since they had Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts shooting for them," Harry Hamlin tells TVGuide.com. "So we're very pleased with the way the pictures turned out."

Hamlin says that Rinna — who previously doffed her duds for Playboy's September 1998 issue, while six months pregnant with daughter Delilah — got the idea for an encore after participating in Room 23, a book of provocative photography by Deborah Anderson. In turn, Anderson shot Rinna's new eight-page Playboy pictorial, which pays homage to the 1967 film The Graduate.

"It's an interesting kind of statement that Lisa has made with Playboy, twice now," says Hamlin. "The first time, she was able to convince Hugh Hefner that we ought to celebrate the human body, not only in terms of recreational sex but in terms of procreational sex — and he went for it. Now, she once again has revisited the idea of a celebration of the human body, but at a somewhat more advanced age than you usually see in Playboy. She has really broken some ground."

Does Rinna's peep show get a thumbs-up from her husband? "She had my endorsement," he says, adding, "Lisa does interesting, far-out things, and she always goes for it with gusto."

Click here, here and here for (relatively safe-for-work) previews of Rinna's new Playboy layout.