Weeks after parents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli began their concurrent prison sentences for conspiracy to commit mail fraud tied to the college admissions scandal, the former YouTuber was finally ready to confront her privilege. In those initial months, she admitted, she struggled to see why everything was making such a big deal about her parents’ having bribed her way into the University of Southern California.
“I remember thinking, ‘How are people mad about this?'” she recalled. “Like, I know that sounds so silly. But in the bubble that I grew up in, I didn’t know so much outside of it. And a lot of kids in that bubble, their parents were donating to schools and doing stuff that advantaged—so many advantages. It’s not fair and it’s not right, but it was happening.”
But having sat in it awhile, she realized it was time to get educated. “That’s embarrassing within itself that I walked around my whole 20 years of life not realizing like, you have insane privilege—you’re like the poster child of white privilege and you had no idea,” she acknowledging, insisting she was there to “apologize for contributing to the social inequality” but also put the entire experience behind her.
“I think what’s so important to me is like to learn from the mistake,” she said. “Not to now be shamed and punished and never given a second chance. I’m 21, I feel like I deserve a second chance to redeem myself, to show I’ve grown.”
Willow, for one, was swayed by her stance. “She agrees with Adrienne that Olivia will be fine because she’s white, pretty and rich—white privilege serves her redemption more than the financial privilege,” a source told E! News. “Willow understands how hard it is for the Black community to forgive Olivia. But if she is genuine about wanting to change and be better, she feels she does deserve a second chance.”