Felicity Huffman Breaks Silence Four Years After College Admissions Scandal

Felicity Huffman is opening up for the first time about her involvement in the college admissions scandal.

Back in 2019, the 60-year-old Desperate Housewives actress served 11 days in prison for paying $15,000 to convicted scandal mastermind Rick Singer to have her daughter Sophia‘s SAT scores secretly corrected.

She also paid a $30,000 fine, served 250 hours of community service, and was on supervised release for one year. Felicity completed her full sentence by October 2020.

Now four years later, Felicity spoke with ABC-7 Eyewitness News about the scandal.

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In the interview, which aired on Thursday (Nov. 30), Felicity reflected on what led her to her crimes.

“People assume 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,” Felicity started. “I worked with a highly recommended college counselor named Rick Singer. I worked with him for a year and trusted him implicitly. And he 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 so, I believed him.”

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

She added, “It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future. And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

Felicity – who said she did not tell Sophia, now 23, about the plans – said that she started having second thoughts as she drove her daughter to take the exam.

“She was going, ‘Can we get ice cream afterwards? I’m scared about the test. What can we do that’s fun?’ And I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around,’” Felicity said. “To my undying shame, I didn’t.”

Earlier this year, Rick Singer received his prison sentence for masterminding the whole scheme.