Everything Olivia Jade Giannulli Has Said About Moving On From the College Admissions Scandal

Credit: Courtesy of Olivia Jade Giannulli/Instagram

Everything Olivia Jade Giannulli Has Said About Moving On From the College Admissions Scandal

Trying her best to move forward. In March 2019, Olivia Jade Giannulli and sister Bella Giannulli landed in the middle of the college admissions scandal when their parents, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, were arrested and accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to the University of Southern California in order for their daughters to get into the school as members of the crew team. After initially maintaining their innocence, the couple eventually pleaded guilty to fraud charges in May 2020. They served separate sentences in prison and paid a total of $400,000 in fines. In December 2020, Olivia Jade spoke out for the first time, joining Facebook's Red Table Talk for an open conversation about what happened. “I feel like a huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege, and so when it was happening, it didn't feel wrong,” the YouTube star shared during the special. “I also felt very misunderstood. The picture that has 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. Also, I understand why people are angry and understand why people say hurtful things and I would too if I wasn't in my boat. … When you read it, you realize that there's like some truth. I understood that people were upset and angry, and maybe it took me a little bit longer to understand what for, but man, am I glad I did realize." Olivia Jade added that she took her "privilege and all my blessings for granted" and never thought twice. [jwplayer HcUD6m0Q-zhNYySv2] “We were talking about being in the public and being publicly shamed, and I was like, ‘Well, my situation doesn’t even compare, I’m not even going to start to compare it to yours,'” the YouTube star explained during a March 2021 TikTok video. “And she looked at me, and she said, ‘Olivia, it doesn’t matter if I’m drowning in 60 feet of water and you’re drowning in 30, we’re both still drowning.’ I think about that quote every day because I think it’s so true and it’s such a bigger message to our world right now. I think we’re all very quick to judge. I think we’re all very quick to put people down.” The influencer stepped even more into the spotlight when she joined season 30 of Dancing With the Stars in September 2021, and was ready to show the world an entirely different side of her. That month, the Full House alum also made headlines as GAC Family announced that she would be reprising her When Calls the Heart role in season 2 of When Hope Calls. While Bella has appeared on Dancing With the Stars to support her sister, Loughlin has not made an appearance. Scroll through the gallery below for everything Olivia Jade has said about moving on following the scandal: [podcast_block]

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Not an Excuse

Olivia first spoke out on Red Table Talk in December 2020, explaining that she is not making an excuse for her part. "On paper, it’s bad — it’s really bad. But I think what a lot of people don’t know is my parents came from a place of just, ‘I love my kids I just want to help my kids — whatever is best for them — I worked my whole life to provide for my family.’ I think they thought it was normal," she said at the time. "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.'"

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Leaving School

During Red Table Talk, the beauty guru said she was "too embarrassed" to return to college after the scandal broke, adding, "I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, clearly."

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Not Looking for Pity

During the Dancing With the Stars premiere in September 2021, she opened up about letting the public back in. “For the past few years, I guess you can say I’ve been wrapped up in a scandal. After everything happened, I did step back from social media and just soak in what everybody was saying," she said at the time, while chatting with partner Val Chmerkovskiy. "I’m not trying to pull a pity card, but I just need to move forward and do better. ... I just want to show people that I have a different side to me, I have a strong work ethic."

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A Bit Scary

Olivia Jade revealed during the first episode of her "Conversations With..." podcast in October that she worries about seeing her name in the media following the scandal. "I’m so scared of looking at my name and something bad is happening and I’m the face of it and it's going to be this big thing that blows up in my face again," she explained on the October 25 episode. "You live your life a little bit differently in my opinion. You kind of start to believe what people are telling you, like, you don’t deserve a second chance, and there is no room for growth and you feel like, not to sound super dark, but how do you bounce back? I want to be alive, I still want to grow up."

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Tough Times

"I’m not trying to victimize myself, but I also am trying just by being and having this personal experience, I really do understand how different of a persona I've become because of it — and not entirely in a good way sometimes," she added during the "Conversations With..." premiere episode.

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A Lesson

"I would be crazy to not have learned anything from this situation of constant guilt and stress that I've given to myself and waken up every day for almost two years straight seeing something written about you," she explained during the episode, during which she was joined by psychologist Hillary Goldsher. "I'm not saying this to throw myself a little pity party. It's circumstantial and obviously, we really messed up. I don't want that to be taken out of context. Speaking as a human, with my own mental [health], it's so much harder for me to be forgiving of myself because I feel so unforgiven by what feels like the entire world to me. It's just [feels] like everybody hates me."

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Defending Her Mom

During an episode of her podcast in November 2021, Olivia Jade and Bella opened up about how much their mom was blamed for the scandal. "Even though I also was getting dragged negatively, it didn't nearly affect me as much as seeing mom having all this thrown on her," Olivia Jade said. "She really took this whole thing on her back, solely. There are a lot of people that were in this case, and a lot of other parents, and I do not know one other person's name. ... It caused a lot of anger within me when I would read stuff about her. And I think it's interesting that when I would read stuff about myself … it didn't nearly affect me the same way if I read it about our own mom."

The influencer also added that she felt she contributed to the scandal, explaining, "I made myself public on YouTube before all of this happened, so then when [the scandal] was happening, I kind of signed up for it. I did post videos talking about things that I very much regret, and I was very open about my life."