Felicity Huffman on ‘Varsity Blues’ scandal: ‘That was my only option.’
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(The Hill) — Four years after “Varsity Blues,” Felicity Huffman is opening up about her role in the college admissions bribery scandal that sent her to prison.
“It seemed like — and I know this seems crazy at the time — that that was my only option to give my daughter a future,” the former “Desperate Housewives” star told KABC’s Marc Brown in a Thursday interview.
“I know hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it,” Huffman, 60, said.
The actor was sentenced to 14 days at a California prison in 2019 after pleading guilty to mail fraud and honest services fraud charges. Huffman paid an SAT proctor to alter her daughter’s scores.
“People assumed 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,” the performer and mom of two said.
“[Singer] 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 I believed him.”
Singer was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison in January.
The scandal — which was dubbed the “largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice” — saw more than 40 people, including “Full House” alum Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, accused of paying large amounts of money to ensure their children were admitted into colleges.
Huffman’s sentence also included 250 hours of community service. In her KABC interview, she said she was speaking out now in order to put the spotlight on the Los Angeles-based organization where she completed her community service: A New Way of Life.
“I want to use my experience, and what I’ve gone through and the pain to bring something good,” Huffman said of her work with the nonprofit, which aids formerly incarcerated women. She now serves on A New Way of Life’s board of directors.
