The actor Felicity Huffman says she paid to have her daughter’s college testing scores raised – breaking federal law and getting imprisoned over it – because she felt pressed to give her child “a chance at a future”.
Huffman, an Emmy winner who starred in the TV series Desperate Housewives, expressed that sentiment in an interview published on Thursday by the Los Angeles news station KABC. The interview marked the first time Huffman had discussed her role in the 2019 scandal that ensnared dozens of prominent, well-connected parents across the US accused of illicitly plotting to get their children into college.
According to federal authorities pursuing the so-called Operation Varsity Blues investigation, Huffman paid $15,000 for an exam proctor to change her daughter Sophia’s answers on the SAT to raise her scores. The fraudulent SAT score that Huffman’s daughter subsequently obtained was 400 points better than an earlier one on a practice version of the test, investigators said.
Huffman, 60, ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud as well as honest services mail fraud. She spent 11 days in prison in October 2019 and completed 250 hours of community service after becoming the first of 34 parents to be sentenced in the scandal’s fallout.
Huffman on Thursday said: “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.”
Elaborating, she said: “I 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.”
Huffman described enduring pangs of anxiety and regret as she drove an unwitting Sophia to the exam.
“She was going, ‘Can we get ice-cream afterwards? I’m scared about the test. What can we do that’s fun?’” Huffman recounted to KABC. “And I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around.’ To my undying shame, I didn’t.”
Huffman’s husband is actor and fellow Emmy winner William H Macy, who starred in the TV show Shameless. He was not charged in the Varsity Blues scandal. Their daughter Sophia Grace Macy later took the SAT again and gained acceptance into Carnegie Mellon University, where she is a student of the theater program.
One of Huffman’s purposes for granting KABC’s interview was to promote a non-profit dedicated to providing housing, job training, clothing and other aid to women who were previously incarcerated. The organization’s name is A New Way of Life, and it is where Huffman completed her court-ordered community service.
“I want to use my experience and what I’ve gone through and the pain to bring something good,” Huffman said to KABC.
Huffman’s work on Desperate Housewives earned her the prime-time Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series in 2005. That same year, her performance in the film Transamerica won her a Golden Globe for best actress as well as an Oscar nomination.