Felicity Huffman Breaks Silence on College Admissions Scandal: ‘I Felt Like I Had to Give My Daughter a Future’

Felicity Hoffman is speaking for the first time about her role in the college admissions scandal that made headlines.

In an interview with ABC-7 Eyewitness News that aired Thursday, the 60-year-old Housewives star and Oscar-nominated actress addressed a criminal conspiracy in which dozens of wealthy parents of high school students — including celebrity moms like Huffman and Lori Loughlin — are accused of using kickbacks, cheating and other forms of illegal fraud to fake their children’s way into elite colleges and universities such as Yale, USC and Georgetown.

The fraud was unraveled thanks, in part, to a government criminal investigation dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.” In 2019, Huffman served 11 days in jail after paying convicted racketeer William “Rick” Singer $15,000 to falsify her daughter’s SAT scores.

Looking back, Huffman explained the reason that drove her to commit the crime.

“People assume I got into this looking for a way to cheat the system and make proverbial back alley criminal deals, but that wasn’t the case,” she said. “I worked with a highly recommended college counselor named Rick Singer. I worked with him for a year and I trusted him unconditionally; he recommended programs and mentors and was an expert. And after a year, he started saying, ‘Your daughter is not going to get into none of the colleges he wants.’ And so I believed him.”

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She continued: “When he slowly began to present the criminal scheme, it seemed like – and I know it seemed crazy at the time – that it was my only option to give my daughter a future. I know hindsight is 20/20, but I felt I felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So I did.”

“I felt like I had to give my daughter a chance for a future,” she said. “And so it was like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

William H. Macy, daughter Georgia Macy, actress Felicity Huffman and daughter Sofia Macy in October 2014.

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

The actress – who says she didn’t tell her daughter Sophia about her plans – recalled thinking about what she had done as she drove her to the exam. “She was like, ‘Can we get ice cream afterwards? I’m scared of dough. What can we do to make it fun?’ And I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around,'” Huffman told the news outlet. “To my infinite shame, I didn’t.”

Huffman pleaded guilty to paying a proctor to change her daughter Sophia’s test answers. At the time of her sentencing in September 2019, Huffman wrote to the judge protesting that she was only thinking about her daughter’s future while participating in the scheme.

“I keep asking myself, ‘Why did I do that? Why did I agree to a scheme to break the law and compromise my integrity? What internal forces pushed me to do it? How could I abandon my own moral compass and common sense?’ ” she wrote in a letter that PEOPLE found at the time.

Felicity Huffman has served her entire sentence for the college admissions scandal

She served 11 days of her 14-day jail sentence in October 2019. The star was also sentenced to 250 hours of community service and was on supervised release for a year. Huffman served her entire sentence until October 2020.

Her husband, Shameless star William H. Macy, has not been charged in connection with the incident. Her daughter Sophia later retook the SAT and was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University’s theater program, where she currently studies.

Rick Singer. Scott Eisen/Getty

Meanwhile, Singer was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his crimes. In January of this year, he was ordered to forfeit $10 million.

Singer orchestrated the scheme using two college prep companies he managed: Key Worldwide Foundation and The Edge College & Career Network. Through his businesses, he helped clients gain college admissions through fraudulent methods such as paying test proctors and bribing college administrators and athletic coaches, according to a sentencing memo obtained by PEOPLE.

A college cheating ringleader allegedly recorded co-conspirators’ phone calls for the FBI

As part of his scheme, Singer earned more than $25 million from his clients while also paying more than $7 million in bribes, according to the memo. “We’re helping the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids in school,” Singer was once heard boasting in a client call recorded by the FBI. “They want assurances, they want this to end.”

Felicity Huffman in December 2022.

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As for Huffman, she’s speaking out now to shed light on A New Way of Life, a nonprofit that provides assistance like housing, job training and clothing to formerly incarcerated women.

“I want to use my experience and what I’ve been through and the pain to do something good,” she told ABC-7 from the organization, where she did her court-ordered community service.

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Source: HIS Education