Felicity Huffman Admits That She's 'Still Processing' the Consequences of College Admissions Scandal
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In 2019, Felicity Huffman’s world changed for good. That’s the year the public found out about the college admissions scandal and the well-to-do parents who paid mastermind Rick Singer to give their kids a side-door opportunity into elite colleges and universities. The 61-year-old actress pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud because she paid $15,000 toward getting her daughter, Sophia Macy, 23, a better SAT score by having a proctor change her answers on the exam.
Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison (she served 11 days), one year of probation, a $30,000 fine, and 250 hours of community service, but the personal punishment still lingers. The Desperate Housewives star gave a pretty layered response to how she was doing in the aftermath in a recent interview with The Guardian. “How I am is kind of a loaded question. As long as my kids are well and my husband is well, I feel like I’m well,” she said. She seems to understand the consequences of her actions, but the heaviness hasn’t gone away despite serving out her court-ordered sentence almost five years ago.
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“I’m grateful to be here,” Huffman added. “But how am I? I guess I’m still processing.” It seems that Hollywood is also having a hard time moving forward after her recent ABC pilot “didn’t get picked up.” She noted, “It’s been hard. Sort of like your old life died and you died with it. I’m lucky enough to have a family and love and means, so I had a place to land.” The college admissions scandal, which also involved Full House star Lori Loughlin, was a firestorm of headlines because it unveiled a tale-as-old-as-time secret of how some privileged families will go to any length to get their child into an A-list university even if they aren’t qualified. Let’s just say, money talks.
Huffman still feels that understandable backlash from the public even years later. “I’m not in any way whitewashing what I did but some people have been kind and compassionate. Others have not,” she revealed. Last year, Huffman explained how she felt manipulated by Singer to get Sophia into the college of her dreams. Huffman told ABC7 in Los Angeles that she “trusted him implicitly” as “he recommended programs and tutors.” But “after a year,” his tone started to change and as a college admissions expert, she was easily influenced.
“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,” Huffman shared. Singer “slowly started to present the criminal scheme” and she thought it was her “only option to give [her] daughter a future” at the time. Huffman now understands how “crazy” it sounds, but she had the mindset that “it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.” Huffman’s husband, William H. Macy was not charged in the case.
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