Felicity Huffman Says She “Had To Break The Law” For Her Daughter

This week, Felicity Huffman spoke to ABC7 Eyewitness News in her first interview since she was involved in a college admissions scandal that sent her to jail.

While the Oscar-nominated Desperate Housewives star has admitted to her wrongdoing — she pleaded guilt to paying $15,000 to get her daughter’s SAT scores inflated in 2019 — she was quick to explain that she was simply doing what she felt she had to for her kid when speaking publicly for the first time.

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

It doesn’t seem like the very privileged daughter of a rich and famous family would have any trouble having a “future,” and it also doesn’t seem like Huffman “had to” break the law. But OK.

Huffman was one of 33 wealthy parents caught in a web of lies and bribes as part of the Operation Varsity Blues investigation. It revolved around a man, Rick Singer, who worked with rich and worried parents to cheat and bribe their way into colleges and universities around the country. All of the families, plus Singer, faced federal charges. Singer is serving 2.5 years in federal prison, while Huffman was in for 11 days.

Huffman recalled the day she drove her older daughter, Sophia, to take the SAT, knowing the the score would be illegally fixed afterward.

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

She also said during the interview that she didn’t seek out Singer; he slowly convinced her to break the law to get her kid admitted to the right schools.

“After a year, he started to say, ‘Your daughter is not going to get into any of the colleges she wants to,’” she said. “And I believed him. And so when he slowly started to present the criminal scheme, it seems like — and I know this seems crazy at the time — but that was my only option to give my daughter a future.”

It does seem crazy, yes.

“And 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.”

Others might say that she would feel like a bad mother for breaking federal law and for refusing to let her daughter apply to college on her own merits.

In addition to Sophia, who is now 23 and attending Carnegie Mellon, Huffman and husband William H. Macy share daughter Georgia, who is 21 and attends Vassar College.

Before this interview, she had only ever issued a statement about her actions.

“My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her,” Huffman wrote. “This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life.”