Her comeback tour. Olivia Jade Giannulli is back — and fully immersing herself in the public eye.
“I think it’s such an incredible opportunity. I’m ready to put myself back out there and try new things,” the YouTube star, 21, told Us Weekly and other press on Wednesday, September 8, after ABC announced that she will be part of Dancing With the Stars season 30. “I’m really excited to challenge myself and put myself outside my comfort zone, which I don’t do often. So, it just all happened and I’m just letting the universe take over and see what happens and living it day by day.
Giannulli is the youngest daughter of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, who were indicted in 2019 as part of the nationwide college admissions scandal. The couple, who also share 22-year-old daughter Bella Giannulli, were accused of paying $500,000 to ensure their daughters were admitted into the University of Southern California. The Full House alum, 57, and the designer, 58, pleaded guilty to fraud charges. They both served separate time in prison and paid a combined $400,000 in fines.
“My mom’s been a huge support,” she shared on Wednesday. “She’s in total mom mode, like, ‘Make sure you take an Epsom salt bath.’ She’s trying to get me to take an ice bath! I’m like, ‘I don’t need an ice bath yet!’ My sister has been telling me she wants to come to every single show.”
In December 2020, Olivia Jade spoke out for the first time, publicly apologizing during an interview on Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk.
“I think for anybody, no matter what the situation is, you don’t want to see your parents go to prison, but also I think it’s necessary for us to move on and move forward,” the influencer said at the time, adding that she knows she’s not the victim. “I don’t deserve pity. We messed up. I just want a second chance to be like, ‘I recognize I messed up.’ I never got to say, ‘I’m really sorry that this happened,’ or ‘I really own that this was a big mess-up on everybody’s part,’ but I think everybody feels that way in my family right now.”
In March, she spoke out about what she went through again during a TikTok video, sharing a lesson that a “very inspirational woman” taught her.
“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 Los Angeles native said at the time. “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 video came three months after the social media star returned to YouTube. In her first video back, she let her fans know she wouldn’t be “rehashing things” but still apologized again for her part in the scandal.
“Although I can’t change the past, I can change how I act and what I do going forward,” she said. “I just want to move on and do better and move forward and come back [and] do what I love, which is YouTube. You don’t have to watch, nobody’s forcing you.”
Dancing With the Stars premieres on ABC Monday, September 20, at 8 p.m. ET.
