Felicity Huffman ‘still processing’ college admissions scandal, says securing a job after prison has been ‘difficult’
Felicity Huffman is “still living” her life after the college admissions scandal and the 11 days she served in prison for her involvement.
“How I’m doing is a pretty tricky question,” the 61-year-old actress told the Guardian in an interview published Tuesday as she reflected on the ordeal.
“As long as my kids and my husband are okay, I feel like I’m okay.”
She also noted that she hasn’t worked much since her release from prison in October 2019.
“I recently did a pilot for ABC that didn’t get picked up. It was difficult,” Huffman explained.
“Kind of like your old life died and you died with it.”
“I’m lucky enough to have a family, love and means, so I had somewhere to land,” she added.
The failed pilot was a “Good Doctor” spinoff called “The Good Lawyer,” according to Deadline.
Huffman also starred in a pilot for an ABC comedy in which she played the owner of a minor league baseball team, but that too was not picked up.
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The “Desperate Housewives” alum was sentenced to two weeks in prison after pleading guilty to paying someone $15,000 to take her daughter, Sophia Grace, Macy’s SAT in 2019.
She was formally charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. The actress served her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.
Additionally, she was ordered to pay a $30,000 fine, perform 250 hours of community service and serve one year of supervised release.
She shares Sophia Grace, now 23, and Georgia Grace Macy, 21, with her husband, “Shameless” star William H. Macy, 73.
Sophia eventually took the SAT on her own and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Huffman broke her silence about the tumultuous time in her family’s life last December.
“People a*sume I went into this business looking for a way to cheat the system and make proverbial back alley criminal deals, but that wasn’t the case,” she told ABC7 Eyewitness News.
She went on to explain that she blindly followed William “Rick” Singer, a college prep coach who created the entire program.
“He recommended programs and tutors, and he was the expert. And after a year, he started saying, ‘Your daughter’s not going to get into any of the colleges she wants,’ and so I believed him,” she reflected.
“When he slowly began to lay out the criminal plan, it seemed to me that…this was my only option to give my daughter a future, and I know hindsight is 20/20, but I felt like I would be a bad mother if I did it. I don’t. So I did it.
The Emmy winner added, “I felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future… which meant I had to break the law.” »
Of course, she wasn’t the only celebrity to spend time behind bars because of the scandal; Lori Loughlin was sentenced to two months in prison for faking her daughters’ participation in their high school rowing team in order to obtain athletic scholarships at the University of Southern California.
In addition to the prison sentence, she agreed to pay a $150,000 fine and perform 100 hours of community service after pleading guilty.
Her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, served five months in prison, paid a $250,000 fine and completed 250 hours of community service.