Jailed Hollywood actress Felicity Huffman said she had 'no choice' but to bribe college officials to get her daughter into school

Felicity Huffman has spoken out for the first time after being jailed for bribing college officials to inflate her daughter's SAT scores in hopes of landing her a spot at a prestigious college. 

The actress, who was just one of many high-profile individuals involved in the 2019 "Varsity Blues admissions scandal," explained that she had only done what she did to ensure her child a better future.

"I know hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn't do it," Huffman said in an interview with ABC7's Marc Brown. "So, I did it."

Huffman's daughter, who she claimed had a learning disability, took the SAT test unaware that her mother had paid the mastermind of the scheme, Rick Singer, $15,000 to have a proctor correct wrong answers.

"I kept thinking 'turn around, just turn around' and to my undying shame, I didn't," Huffman said.

She explained that a year later, she and her daughters were woken up at gunpoint by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which she thought was "a joke."

While she expressed regret for her actions, which landed her a $30,000 fine and an 11-day stint in prison in 2019, Huffman said that at the time, "it felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future ... which meant I had to break the law."

She and her husband, William Macy, had originally hired Singer to help their daughter with her SAT scores, but eventually he told the couple that they'd have to cheat if she had any hope of getting into her colleges of choice.

When the scheme was presented to her, Huffman recalled believing it was her "only choice."
 

Looking back on it now, she said, "I think I feel the people I owe a debt and an apology to is the academic community and to the students and the families that sacrifice and work really hard to get to where they are going legitimately."

As ABC7 reports, while Huffman's daughter was initially turned down by every school she applied to, she has since retaken the SAT and now studies drama at Carnegie Mellon University.