Have you noticed that People Magazine has treated Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman’s legal/criminal issues like those issues are the worst things to ever happen to white women? It’s particularly egregious in Felicity’s case when all things were said and done. Felicity got caught doing something illegal, she was charged and she quickly took a plea. She ended up with a 14-day sentence. The end. But it’s still inspired People Magazine to do dozens of stories about Poor Felicity and her endurance in the face of… doing crimes and barely facing any substantive punishment. But don’t you know, the REAL punishment is what happened to Felicity’s family.
Felicity Huffman and her husband William H. Macy are taking small steps towards rebuilding their family after the college admissions scandal rocked their foundation.
The longtime couple, who wed in 1997 and welcomed Sophia, 19, in 2000 and Georgia, 17, in 2002, are prioritizing family time as they continue to weather the controversy. Huffman, 56, and Georgia have also kept up their volunteer work at the Teen Project, a local rehab center for girls who have lived on the streets and who are trying to earn their GEDs, where they’ve been tutoring for almost two years.
“They are talking a lot and spending lots of time together,” a source tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, on stands Friday. “They’re going for walks, playing board games and having family dinners. They are a solid group and they are leaning on each other for support.”
The tight-knit family’s quiet life “exploded” when six FBI agents entered their home in the early hours of March 12 and arrested Huffman, Macy wrote in a letter to the judge. Huffman later pleaded guilty for paying $15,000 to facilitate cheating on Sophia’s SAT test by having a proctor correct the teen’s answers. The Desperate Housewives actress and Oscar nominee has since been sentenced to 14 days in federal prison, plus a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and a year of supervised release.
“The family has gone through some rough patches but they’re fighting through them as best they can. They know it will take some time,” the source adds.
Wait, what? Georgia has been volunteering and tutoring girls who are trying to earn their GEDs? I thought part of Felicity’s sob story was that Georgia and Sophia both had significant learning disabilities? But one of them is a tutor? Strange. It’s almost as if… Georgia and Sophia were just average-to-poor students in general and Felicity wanted to buy their SAT scores to convince people that she has brilliant daughters. Or something, I don’t know. I’m glad Felicity and Georgia volunteer. But enough of the sugary sympathetic stories. Felicity got what she deserved. In truth, she deserved a harsher penalty, but she just played it a lot smarter than Lori Loughlin.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty, cover courtesy of People.
Just how does one prepare for a prison stint? Do you juice fast? Hide the greys? Get a great manicure that will last two weeks? Deep breathing exercises? Make a reading list? Seriously, what do you do to prepare for prison? Me, I’d be panicking every day.
In all seriousness, apparently prison readiness consulting, for white collar/wealthy criminals of course, is a small but thriving industry. Similar to jury pool consultants for the same demographic.
Well who knew? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they found a way to monetize the incarceration process itself. Is there anything about incarceration that isn’t making someone money?
Dr Phil interviewed a guy who specializes in this on his podcast a few months ago, particularly in reference to Varsity Blues. It was a fascinating interview – in a nutshell he said Felicity was playing this all right and Lori all wrong. He said that psychologically, you’re almost in jail from the time the charges are made, so it’s much better to fess up, do the time, and work on repairing your life afterwards.
Makes sense, Emma33. I’d feel trapped and panicky until I went in, and then it would probably double. Funny, trapped and panicky was how I felt when I was pregnant. Love my lad with all my heart, hated the process.
Fun though it is to mock her, can people not treat prison like it is a cake walk?
Sometimes tell your when to get up what to wear what to eat. The mere fact of that loss of liberty and autonomy is the punishment of prison along with the shame is the punishment of the sentence.
I would be traumatised with that. She will be as well.
And I do support prison reform, appropriate sentencing, and restorative justice over jail terms.
But, that lose of autonomy. That is my nightmare. I don’t care how country club people think it is.
Walks, family dinners and board games. Always the board games. There must be some PR handbook that says “Never say the client plays video games. Board games are wholesome and low key. ‘Family’ dinners are good. Walks are good.” I’ll save my real venom for Aunt Becky, but FH still sets my teeth on edge.
Mine too. She is sorry ONLY that she got caught. This whole “poor family” shill really sets me off. I will never believe Macy didn’t know but he has a job & more work.
I’m so sick of the sympathetic stories about this lying cheater. She’s an actress and she’s playing the part of the remorseful woman to perfection. Puh-lease! She’s just sorry she got caught. No real penalty. A few thousand is a drop in the bucket for a woman with multiple homes who lives in luxury. Two weeks in Club Fed won’t affect her at all. Then she’ll make bank on all the sob story interviews on how she had more time to reflect on her crimes blah blah blah. She makes me want to SCREAM 😱!
Too right about all this “family time to heal” bullcrap being a total performance by an actress who knows how to pull heartstrings. I wish everyone had seen Flack, the British series which showed what PR people will do to cover up the crimes and misdemeanors of their utterly venal clients. Huffman knew *exactly* what she was doing when she attempted to buy her daughters admissions to university; pretending now that it was all a “tragic mistake” is the height of cynicism. You’re right; she’s just sorry she got caught.
Was her husband not involved? Did she do it without telling him?
He was in the know but prosecutors didn’t feel they had enough evidence on him for a conviction.
She handled it a lot better than aunt Becky. I think it will be easier for her public image to recover as a result, because she immediately took responsibility. But we don’t need to feel bad for her. Her privilege has protected her, if she had been a woman of color, it would have been a much stricter sentence and we all know it.
I do have lots of sympathy for Huffman’s daughters. Their own mother had no faith in them and she acted like an a**hole. Do I have sympathy for FH? Not so much
Her outcome is likely better than Lori’s but her reputation likely still won’t recover 100%, there will always be little jokes about this, even YEARS from now. I will have a hard time watching her in anything now, especially when she plays a Mother!! I think she has exagerated that her daughters have learning disabilities – wlikely they were both just below-average in the brains department and poor things, that will follow them for a long time too. But I feel NO sympathy for any of them.
Walks, family dinners and board games is how you make amends when you break the law. Got it! Ugh!
Because SHE’S the victim here.
Not to be cynical, but she reminds me of Livia Soprano: the hangdog look, the mea culpas and the nice and drab nun-like attire.
Nice Emmy worthy performance