Felicity Huffman returns to television for the first time since the college admissions scandal that landed her in jail in 2019.
The Desperate Housewives star, 61, who served 11 days in prison for fraud in 2019, will star in the second season of Criminal Minds spin-off Evolution.
Huffman will guest star as ‘Dr. Jill Gideon, a brilliant biological psychiatrist, who agrees to help the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit investigate a murderous conspiracy theory.
According to the synopsis: “Jill is reluctant to return to the office’s elite team given her complicated history with David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and her dead ex-husband, Jason Gideon (previously played by original series star Mandy Patinkin). , but soon realizes that a specific set of skills could help them uncover another clue to the elusive mystery of the Gold Star.
He also recently starred in a revival of Taylor Mac’s comedy Hir at London’s Park Theatre.
Felicity Huffman returns to television for the first time since the college admissions scandal that landed her in jail in 2019 (pictured in 2023).
Huffman will guest star as ‘Dr. Jill Gideon, a brilliant biological psychiatrist, who agrees to help the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit investigate a murderous conspiracy theory.
‘I recently did a pilot for ABC that wasn’t picked up. “It’s been difficult,” she said. The Guardian.
‘It’s like your old life died and you died with it. I’m lucky to have a family, love and means, so I had a place to land.
She was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006 for playing a trans woman in the drama Transamerica, a role she said she “couldn’t do now” amid the debate over authentic casting.
‘I think we should reflect the audience and that should include everyone. There has been so much inequality for so long and now the pendulum must swing in the other direction. But I hope this leads to a situation where anyone can touch anything,” he said.
Felicity added in a statement to West End Theater: ‘I feel honored to be able to work with Steve Kunis and perform at the Park Theatre.
‘As an avid fan of Taylor Mac, I am very excited to be able to perform in one of Taylor’s brilliant works.
‘I studied in London in the Paleolithic era and it has been a dream of mine to come back here and work one day. I’m a lucky girl.
Hir will run at the Park Theater from February 15 to March 16.
In December last year, Felicity finally broke her silence over the scandal and said she felt she had “no choice” but to break the law.
Felicity paid $30,000 in fines and spent 11 days in jail after being accused of fraud.
The Desperate Housewives star said she’s “still processing” after serving 11 days in prison for fraud in 2019, but she recently starred in a revival of the Taylor Mac Hir comedy (pictured in Boston federal court in 2019).
The star played Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives, which ran from 2004 to 2012.
He had paid Rick Singer $15,000 to alter his daughter Sophia’s SAT results and get her a place in college and was among a group of rich and famous parents swept up in the scandal.
Actress Lori Loughlin was also jailed for paying for her two daughters to be accepted into USC.
In her first public comments outside the courtroom, Felicity said ABC who thought it was “a joke” when FBI agents showed up at her mansion to arrest her.
‘They came into my house, woke up my daughters at gunpoint (again, nothing new for the black and brown community) and then put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me.
‘I asked him if I could get dressed. I thought it was a hoax. I literally turned to an FBI person with a bulletproof vest and a gun and said “is this a joke?”
Felicity said she regretted the plan but felt she had no choice at the time because Sophia, who previously said she has a learning disability, would not have been accepted otherwise.
Now, Sophia is studying theater at Carnegie Mellon.
‘I felt I had to give my daughter a chance for the future. And so it was kind of like my daughter’s future, which meant she had to break the law,” she said.
“I guess I feel like the people I owe a debt and an apology to are the academic community and the students and families who sacrifice and work very hard to rightfully get to where they’re going.”
Felicity spoke to highlight A New Way of Life, an organization that helps formerly incarcerated women reintegrate into society.
“I want to use my experience, what I’ve been through and the pain to contribute something good,” he said.
Huffman opened up about how the Varsity Blues scandal affected her and admitted she feels like her “old life is dead” in a new interview.
Felicity with her daughters Georgia (far left) and Sophia (second from left) and her husband William H. Macy at the 2019 Golden Globes
Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giuannulli were also arrested and spent time in jail.
Felicity and her husband William H. Macy hired Singer to help Sophia improve her scores so she could get into college.
She claims the plan wasn’t obvious at first, but it became clear when Singer told them that Sophia wouldn’t be accepted into any school without greasing the wheels.
‘After a year, he started saying that his daughter won’t get into any of the universities she wants.
And I believed him. And so, when he slowly began to present the criminal plan, it seemed (and I know this seems crazy at the time) that this was my only option to give my daughter a future.
‘And I know hindsight is 20/20, but I felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it.
“So… I did it,” he said.
Sophia did not know that her parents had paid for someone to modify her test answers after completing the SATS.
The scheme involved Singer paying a handful of discreet SAT test proctors who would inflate students’ scores once they had completed the test.
Lori Loughlin had her daughters pose on rowing machines as part of her fraudulent applications claiming to be star athletes.
On the day of the SAT test, he said Sophia was nervous and asked if they could go out for ice cream afterward.
“She was like, ‘Can we have ice cream later?'” Huffman recalls. “I’m afraid of the test.
‘What can we do that’s fun? And I kept thinking, turn around, just turn around. And to my eternal shame, I didn’t,” Huffman said.
Lori and her husband Mossimo Giuliani had their daughters pose as sports stars, propping them up on rowing machines to falsify applications that portrayed them as athletes.
Rick Singer, the mastermind, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in January of this year.