The youngest daughter of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, beauty influencer Olivia Jade is breaking her silence on the college admission scandal.
Olivia joined Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk” to speak on the incident which resulted in her parents being sentenced to prison and the downfall of her YouTube empire.
Loughlin and Giannulli admitted in May to paying college counselor Rick Singer $500,000 to get their two daughters accepted into the University of Southern California as crew recruits.
“There is no justifying or excusing what happened because what happened was wrong and I think every single person in my family can be like ‘That was messed up. That was a big mistake,’” Olivia said.
During one point in the “Red Table Talk,” Olivia mentioned there was a lot she was not fully aware of when she was applying to the University of Southern California.
“A huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege…” Olivia said. “When it was happening, it didn’t feel like it was wrong. It didn’t feel like ‘That’s not fair, a lot of people don’t have that.’ I was in my own little bubble, focusing about my comfortable world.”
Olivia revealed that at first she didn’t understand why people were angered by her family’s actions and recognized what she understood to be donations to universities as normal, not bribery.
When asked, Olivia shared her new awareness of the situation.
“I’m grateful for this situation to see that big change and that big difference in my own mind to know like ‘OK, Olivia. The fact that you were on YouTube and you were saying stuff like ‘I don’t want to go to school. I just want to go party at school…’ shows how fortunate you were,” she said.
Several months before news of the scandal broke, Olivia found herself in hot water after saying in one of her YouTube videos that all she looked forward to was the college experience of partying and attending tailgates, saying, “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend but I’m going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can balance it all. But I do want the experience of gamedays, partying… I don’t really care about school.”
Although expressing ungratefulness for her prestigious education opportunities growing up, Olivia revealed she is now working towards diminishing the inequalities that benefitted her.
Hoping to make a change, Olivia recently volunteered to work with children in an after school program and is looking for new opportunities to invest her time in an effort to give back to children who aren’t as privileged.
“What I think is so important to me is to learn from the mistake, not to now be shamed and punished and never given a second chance,” Olivia said. “I’m 21, I feel like I deserve a second chance to redeem myself…”
