Felicity Huffman has opened up for the first time about her role in the college admissions scandal.
In an interview with ABC-7 on Thursday 30 November, the 60-year-old Desperate Housewives star, reflected on the incident in 2019 where wealthy parents– including celebrities– used illegal tactics in order to get their children accepted into elite colleges such as the Ivy League system and the University of Southern California.
Huffman was found to have paid college counselor and forefront of the “Operation Varsity Blues” scandal William “Rick” Singer $15,000 for an SAT protector to change her daughter’s test answers and served 11 days of her 14-day prison sentence in a federal prison after pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
At the time of her sentencing, she owned up to her actions saying: “I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community. I want to apologise to them and, especially, I want to apologise to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly.”
During the interview, Huffman spoke candidly about what drove her to take such drastic measures to get her oldest daughter admitted to an elite university. “People assume that I went into this looking for a way to cheat the system and making proverbial criminal deals in back alleys, but that was not the case,” she said.
“I worked with a highly recommended college counselor named Rick Singer. I worked with him for a year and trusted him implicitly; he recommended programs and tutors and he was the expert. And after a year, he started to say: ‘Your daughter is not going to get into any of the colleges that she wants to.’ And so, I believed him.”
She continued: “When he slowly started to present the criminal scheme, it seemed like - and I know this seems crazy at the time - that that was my only option to give my daughter a future. I know hindsight is 20/20 but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So, I did it.”
“It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,” she said. “And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”
Huffman talked about having second thoughts regarding Singer’s plans while driving her daughter Sophia to take the SAT. “She was going: ‘Can we get ice cream afterwards? I’m scared about the test. What can we do that’s fun?’ And I kept thinking: ‘Turn around, just turn around,’” Huffman told the outlet. “To my undying shame, I didn’t.”
After serving her prison sentence in October 2019, Huffman was sentenced to complete 250 hours of community service and was on supervised release for one year.
She also used her interview as an opportunity to offer an apology. “I think the people I owe a debt and apology to is the academic community,” she said. “And to the students and the families that sacrifice and work really hard to get to where they are going legitimately.”
Meanwhile, Sophia went on to take the SATs again and was accepted into Carnegie Mellon’s theater program, where she plans to graduate from in 2024.
