Felicity Huffman has broken her silence on her role in the college admission scandal which saw her imprisoned for 11 days in 2019.
The former Desperate Housewives star, married to Shameless star William H. Macy, gave her first and only interview to ABC-7 Eyewitness News about why she broke the law.
© Leon BennettIn the interview, Felicity was particularly keen to clarify people’s perceptions about what led her into the scandal. She implored that it was not the case that she was “looking for a way to cheat the system”.
“I worked with a highly recommended college counselor named Rick Singer. I worked with him for a year and trusted him implicitly. And he recommended programs and tutors and he was the expert.”
When the counselor said he didn’t think her daughter was going to get into any of the colleges she wanted to, she “believed him”. She outlined that Singer had “slowly started to present the criminal scheme”, which she felt was “the only option to give my daughter a future”.
The scheme in question led her to paying $15,000 for someone to falsify her daughter Sophia’s SAT results. Reflecting on the decisions six years on, the actress explained that “hindsight is 20/20 but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn't do it. So, I did it.”
© LISA O'CONNORThe actress explained that she did not tell her daughter about her plans, and recalled having second thoughts at the time about what she had done as she drove her daughter to the SAT exam.
“I kept thinking, 'Turn around, just turn around,'”, she explained. "To my undying shame, I didn't."
© JOSEPH PREZIOSOFelicity explained how the FBI “came into my home” and “woke my daughters up at gunpoint” to arrest her. She wasn’t dressed and explained that she thought it was a “hoax”.
The 60-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud and was sentenced to serve 14 days in prison, as well as pay a $30,000 fine and complete 250 hours of community service. She also had one year supervised release for her part in the nationwide scandal.
She was not the only celebrity implicated in the scandal, which saw Full House star Lori Loughlin charged as well as over 30 other parents. However, her husband was not charged, and Sophia would go on to retake the SAT after which she was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University’s theater program, where she is still studying.
Rick Singer was sentenced to three and a half years in prison as the mastermind behind the scheme, and earlier this year he was asked to forfeit $10 million.
