Olivia Jade the popular beauty influencer and youngest daughter of Full House Actress Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli break her silence on the university admissions scandal that landed her famous parents in prison.
Olivia Jade Giannulli is breaking her silence. Nearly two years after her parents, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, were charged in a nationwide scandal over college admissions fraud, the YouTube star opened up for the first time about the “mistakes” her family made in an emotional episode of Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk. “There is no justifying or excusing what happened, ’cause what happened was wrong,” Olivia, 21, told hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield Norris.
Lori Loughlin ’s Daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli break her silence on the university admissions scandal – Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch
“Every single person in my family can be like, ‘That was messed-up. That was a big mistake.’ ” With her parents currently serving their prison sentences after pleading guilty to fraud charges—Loughlin, 56, is serving two months; Mossimo, 57, five months— Olivia said she “was not fully aware of what was going on” with her college application. “I put a lot of trust into a person that claimed their profession was college counseling, and it led me in a wrong direction,” she said about her family’s decision to pay scam ringleader Rick Singer $500,000 to falsely designate herself and her older sister, Bella, 22, as recruits to the University of Southern California crew team. Both Olivia and Bella posed on rowing machines in photos released by prosecutors. “We had the means to do something, and we completely took it and ran with it,” says Olivia. Though she was initially confused by the fierce backlash her family received, Olivia insists she learned a lesson. “In the bubble, I grew up in . . . a lot of parents were donating to schools—it’s not fair and it’s not right, but it’s happening,” she said.
Banfield Norris (Jada Pinkett Smith’s mother) called her the “epitome of white privilege,” and Olivia agreed with the assessment, adding that she has spent time mentoring young, at-risk students in Los Angeles in recent weeks. “It was a big shift in my head knowing, ‘Okay, let’s start recognizing where the wrongs are.’ I want to continue finding more things to do, but not just throw money at a problem.” She left the University of Southern California when the scandal broke in 2019, and now she’s planning to return to her YouTube channel, which has 1.87 million subscribers. “When I go back, I just want to make it very clear [that] there are big problems going on in the world that are outside my bubble,” she said. “The picture that’s been painted of me I feel like is not who I am. I’m not this bratty girl that doesn’t want to change anything.”