Olivia Jade Giannulli is breaking her silence.
The 21-year-old influencer and daughter of Lori Loughlin spoke out on Tuesday in an interview on Red Table Talk, her first since the 2019 college admissions scandal. Her parents, Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, both pleaded guilty in the scandal after prosecutors said they paid $500,000 to get their daughters into college by having them falsely designated as crew team recruits.
"There is no justifying or excusing what happened because what happened was wrong," Jade said. "And I think every single person in my family can be like, 'That was messed up. That was a big mistake.'"
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Although she offered an apology for the scandal, saying "we messed up," she also admitted she didn't initially understand the outrage.
"My thoughts are completely different now, but I remember thinking, 'How are people mad about this?' ... I was like, 'I don't really understand what's wrong with this,'" she admitted. "But I didn't realize, at the time, that's privilege. I didn't put those two together. I was like, 'Well, this is what everybody does.'"
She expressed embarrassment that "I walked around my whole 20 years of life not realizing, 'You have insane privilege. You're like the poster child of white privilege, and you had no idea.'"
Jade, who lost sponsors in the wake of the scandal last year, said she doesn't "deserve pity" but asked for "a second chance to redeem myself," ending the interview by again expressing regret that she "took my privilege and all my blessings for granted" but saying she now hopes to "move forward and do better." Watch the full conversation below. Brendan Morrow
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