Actor William H. Macy alluded to some drama involving his daughter’s college application process shortly before his wife, actress Felicity Huffman, and dozens of others were charged by the FBI on Tuesday in a college admissions bribery scheme.
Huffman, long a co-star on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” series, was allegedly part of a scam in which more than 40 defendants paid up to $6 million in bribes to make sure their children were accepted to elite schools such as Yale, Stanford and Wake Forest Universities.
Macy, 69, who was not charged on Tuesday, recently told Parade that the college application process for Sophia, the eldest of the couple’s two daughters, was pretty taxing.
“She’s going to go to college… We’re right now in the thick of college application time, which is so stressful,” the “Shameless” star said in January. “I am voting that once she gets accepted, she maybe takes a year off. God doesn’t let you be 18 twice … But it’s just my opinion, and we’ll see what she wants to do, what Felicity thinks and how the chips fall.”
Huffman, 56, was heard on a recorded phone call discussing a rigged SAT test she set up for 18-year-old Sophia, according to an FBI affidavit. She allegedly made a $15,000 charitable donation to a company that claimed “to provide educational and self-enrichment programs to disadvantaged youth.”
What the company actually did was falsely claim that participants’ children had learning disabilities in order to get them extra time and additional accommodations for college exams. Sophia allegedly took the test with a proctor who administered the exam and then corrected her wrong answers.
According to federal agents, Huffman and Macy also began arrangements for their younger daughter, Georgia, to cheat on the SAT in the same manner, “but ultimately decided not to.”