- Huffman spent eleven days in jail for paying someone to falsify Sophia's SAT score
- She says she felt like there was no other option because she 'didn't get in'
Felicity Huffman has finally broken her silence on the Varsity Blues scandal, which saw her spend 11 days in jail after bribing college officials for $15,000 to mess up her daughter's SAT scores. She said she felt like she had “no choice” but to break the law.
Huffman paid $30,000 in fines and spent 11 days in jail after being charged with fraud.
She had paid Rick Singer $15,000 to fudge her daughter Sophia's SAT scores in 2018 to get her a spot in college, and was among a group of wealthy, famous parents swept up in the scandal. Actress Lori Loughlin was also jailed for paying for both of her daughters' admission to USC.
In her first public comments outside the courtroom, Huffman says ABC that she thought it was “a joke” when FBI agents entered her home to arrest her.
Felicity Huffman said in her first interview since the Varsity Blues scandal that she felt she had no choice but to break the law to “give her daughter a future.”
Huffman with daughters Georgia (far left) and Sophia (second from left) and husband William H. Macy at the 2019 Golden Globes. She was arrested months later for paying $15,000 to have someone fudge Sophia's SAT score to send her to to get into university
Huffman said she regretted the plan but felt she had no choice at the time because Sophia, who she previously said has a learning disability, would not have been accepted otherwise.
She now studies drama at Carnegie Mellon in New York.
'I felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future. And so it was kind of like my daughter's future, which meant breaking the law,” she said.
She and husband William H. Macy hired Singer to help Sophia improve her scores and attend college.
She claims that the plan was not obvious at first, but became clear when Singer told them that Sophia would not be accepted into any school without greasing the wheels.
Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giuannulli were also arrested and spent time in jail
'After a year he started saying that your daughter is not going to any of the universities she wants to go to.
'And I believed him. And so when he slowly started presenting the criminal plan, it seemed like – and I know this seemed crazy at the time – but that 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 didn't. So I did it, she said.
Sophia was unaware that her parents had paid for someone to change her test answers after she completed the SATS.
Lori Loughlin had her daughters pose on rowing machines as part of their fraudulent job applications claiming to be star athletes
In this photo released by prosecutors, Isabella Giannulli appears to be posing on an ERG machine
Rick Singer, the mastermind behind the plan, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in January this year. He is pictured awaiting sentencing in July last year
The scheme involved Singer paying a handful of discreet SAT test proctors who would inflate students' scores once they completed the exam.
On the day of the SAT test, she said Sophia was nervous and asked if they could go out for ice cream afterwards.
“She said, 'Can we get ice cream afterward?'” Huffman recalls. “I'm scared about the test. What can we do that is fun? And I kept thinking, turn around, just turn around. And to my eternal shame, I didn't,” Huffman said.
Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giuliani had their daughters disguised as sports stars and propped them up on rowing machines to cover up applications that presented them as athletes.