Olivia Jade Has Not Spoken to Parents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli Since They Reported to Prison

Olivia Jade Giannulli has broken her silence on the college admissions scandal for the first time since parents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli were implicated last year in wide-reaching fraud after paying $500,000 to get Olivia, 21, and her sister, Isabella Rose, 22, into the University of Southern California under false pretenses.

The influencer spoke publicly about her family’s involvement in the fraud during her first interview since the scandal broke on Tuesday’s episode of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk, sharing that she now recognizes they “messed up” and that her parents have to serve their time in prison to move on. Olivia Jade added that she had not spoken to her parents since they reported to prison on fraud charges, which she said was due to COVID-19 rules.

“There’s a quarantine phase just because of COVID, so I think that is the reason, but I am not too sure, I just haven’t heard anything so I am just waiting,” she explained. “I have never gone that long without … I am super close with my parents, especially my mom, she is like my best friend.”

“I know she’s strong and it’s a good reflection period,” she continued of mom Loughlin. “I know that it’s a positive that she’s in there right now, she gets to really rethink everything that happened, kind of figure out when she comes out what she wants to do, what she’s learned through all of this and I think that hopefully will be a blessing in the end.”

Olivia Jade added that it has been “hard” seeing her parents go to prison, but that everyone in her family sees the gravity of the situation. “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,” she said.

The YouTube star clarified that she isn’t trying to “victimize” herself by speaking out. “I don’t want pity — I don’t deserve pity. We messed up. I just want a second chance to be like, ‘I recognize I messed up,’” she said. “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.”

As for her future, Olivia Jade said she never returned to USC because she was “too embarrassed” of not having been deserving of admission on her own. Despite her schooling difficulties, the young star said she has grown over the past year when it comes to learning more about her privilege, despite initially not seeing “the wrong” in what had gone down.

“I was like, ‘Why is everybody complaining?’” she said of her initial reaction to the scandal. “That’s embarrassing within itself, 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. You had no idea.’”