Whatever Happened To Felicity Huffman?
As the long list of stars who are currently in jail can tell you, crime and the limelight are a disastrous combination. Maintaining a career in the arts is hard enough already — factor in a very public legal battle, and there's no telling how quickly your prospects can sour (as Marvel Studios star Jonathan Majors is currently learning the hard way). One actor recently familiar with the near-totality of this dilemma is Felicity Huffman, who — 15 years after taking a bow in one of the most popular television programs ever — found herself pleading guilty to a criminal charge.
Now free after serving time in a federal prison, the 60-year-old "Desperate Housewives" star is facing a uniquely challenging second act. Not only does she have to navigate a sexist and ageist industry already inclined to pass over women of her age, but she must do so while attempting to bounce back from a particularly divisive public court case. It certainly doesn't help matters that her film resume is a tad bare, or that her last major TV role came to an end well over a decade ago. Here's everything Felicity Huffman is up against in Hollywood these days.
She hasn't had a major role since Desperate Housewives
It's hard to overstate the impact "Desperate Housewives" had on television during its eight-season run on ABC. For over seven years, millions of viewers tuned in to watch the primetime soap opera, which starred Felicity Huffman alongside an ensemble of actors that included Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria, and Nicollette Sheridan. Yet although its legacy is not in dispute (the fictional series is often credited with inspiring Bravo's empire of "Real Housewives" programs), its cast never broke out into other projects in the years following its end in 2012 — Huffman included.
Though some actors — like Mehcad Brooks, Neal McDonough, and Alfre Woodard — could be found in popular films and television shows into the late 2010s and early 2020s, "Desperate Housewives" remains the last big series Huffman, Cross, Hatcher, Longoria, and Sheridan were involved in prominently. This isn't to disparage their careers, as most actors would be lucky to even have one credit on a project as huge as "Desperate Housewives."
While there's always a chance that the right role could come around — thrusting them once more into the core cast of a major contemporary series — most actors in this position enjoy a more episodic and perhaps experimental career compared to the consistency of working on one long-running project. But for a uniquely embattled actor like Huffman, a lack of recent, relevant employment may hinder this phase of her career.
She allegedly paid someone $15,000 to help her daughter cheat on her SAT
No one envies the pressure high school juniors and seniors feel as they struggle to finish the most difficult years of their secondary education while also jumping through all the hoops to apply for college programs. The higher these students aim — and the more competition they face in nabbing one of the few spots at their dream school — the more emphasis is often put on standardized test scores. It's an already brutal system for adolescents to attempt to secure future opportunities, and it's made all the more heinous when wealthy parents throw their money around to get their kids a leg up.
Such was the case with Felicity Huffman, who — rather than making a grossly large donation to the school of her daughter's choice or using her Hollywood connections to get a primo recommendation letter — opted to pay $15,000 for a compromised proctor to correct her daughter's SATs in secret. As outlined in an FBI affidavit filed in 2019, Huffman and her husband William H. Macy were accused of making a fraudulent charitable donation in the above amount to Key Worldwide Foundation, a shady organization that helped wealthy parents essentially lie their children's way into top colleges. This reportedly went on between the years of 2011 and 2019, at which point Huffman and dozens of other individuals were brought up on charges (Macy, however, was specifically not charged, as he was unaware of the scheme).
She was very publicly arrested by agents from the FBI and IRS
Getting arrested is a traumatic experience that (along with much more important consequences) can have a devastating effect on anyone's career prospects. This is especially true if you happen to have been one of the biggest television stars of the 2000s, making your legal struggles the subject of national news.
In the early hours of March 12, 2019, federal agents stormed the Los Angeles home of Felicity Huffman, where she lived with her husband William H. Macy and their two teenage daughters. The family awoke to the sight of armored personnel holding guns to their faces, shouting orders all the while. In a recent interview with People, Huffman shared that she couldn't believe what was happening to them, nor could she immediately put together why the FBI would be in their house. "I thought it was a hoax," she told the outlet. "I literally turned to one of the FBI people, in a flak jacket and [with] a gun, and I went, 'Is this a joke?'"
As they handcuffed Huffman, the agents explained to her that she was being apprehended due to her (then alleged) involvement with a criminal scheme that had been under investigation by the FBI and IRS (codenamed "Operation: Varsity Blues"). Her predicament likely became more real for her when she was brought before a judge later that afternoon.
She pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge
Though some legally embattled celebrities enjoy a presumption of innocence until (and in some cases, even after) they're proven guilty, there's no doubt about Felicity Huffman's involvement in the "Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal. In April 2019, less than a month after she was arrested, Huffman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services fraud for paying someone to help her daughter cheat on the SATs.
In a statement obtained by CNN, Huffman apologized to students and parents across the country for having used her wealth to cheat the standardized testing system, as well as to her daughter for undermining her academic integrity. "My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her," she said. "This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life. My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty."
Huffman's guilty plea was made in cooperation with federal prosecutors. At the time of her arrest, she faced 20 years in federal prison — after she pleaded guilty, prosecutors recommended a sentence of one month in prison accompanied by a $20,000 fine. After considering this, a federal judge sentenced her to two weeks in prison.
She was only sentenced to two weeks in prison -- and didn't even serve the entire sentence
Celebrities — especially white celebrities — are generally perceived to be treated better by the law (some scholars have even offered that this perception is backed up by fact). As such, when it came time for Felicity Huffman to receive her sentence for pleading guilty, it's hard to imagine anyone expected she would see the maximum of two decades in prison — but two weeks seemed to rub people the wrong way.
As Yahoo! News chronicled at the time, users on X, formerly known as Twitter, expressed outrage that the "Desperate Housewives" star would serve a sentence of only 14 days (in addition to 12 months of supervised release, 250 hours of community service and an order to pay $30,000 in fines). One user wrote, "Felicity Huffman gets 14 days in prison... It really does pay off to be rich and entitled." Another offered, "If anyone ever looks you in the eyes and says white [privilege] isn't real just tell them about Felicity Huffman. What a load of bull****." This privileged perception of Huffman was made all the worse when the actor was released from prison 11 days into her sentence, thanks to a bureau policy concerning weekend release protocols.
Her last role before the scandal was a horribly ironic one
Just before she was arrested in 2019, Felicity Huffman was cast in a supporting role in the Ava Duvernay-helmed Netflix docuseries "When They See Us." Though she probably didn't know it at the time, this would become the most important role of her career — yes, arguably even more than "Desperate Housewives." While the soap opera had made her a star, it was ultimately this new miniseries that was the last thing audiences saw her in before her extended, quasi-forced sabbatical from acting. Unfortunately for her, it couldn't have been a worse role.
In "When They See Us," Huffman played Linda Fairstein, a controversial (to say the least) real-life figure. Fairstein is portrayed in the highly dramatized series as the primary driving force behind the conviction of the Central Park Five, five Black teenagers who were wrongfully jailed for a crime they didn't commit. In the series, Huffman's Fairstein is essentially the embodiment of a criminal justice system that unfairly persecutes Black and Brown people (it should be noted here that the real Linda Fairstein has filed a lawsuit against Netflix for her portrayal in the series).
Given that the series aired the month after Huffman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to just two weeks in prison, her role as a prosecutor pushing for harsh sentences was uncomfortably ironic. This is the last high-profile project Huffman was involved with, and it's likely the last image of her those who watched the series have in their head.
Lori Loughlin's involvement and release reignited negative media buzz
For Felicity Huffman, the best and only thing to do was arguably to disappear for a while. She couldn't control her sentencing or the time of her release, nor could she affect how the general public would react — but she could at least lay low long enough to not make any new headlines, which would eventually allow people to lose interest in the case. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only headline-making name implicated in it.
"Full House" star Lori Loughlin was also arrested as part of Operation: Varsity Blues, fame turning both her and Huffman into the joint faces of the very public scandal. Whenever a development in one of their cases made the news, the other was often name-checked in some capacity. Because Loughlin was involved in a different arm of the criminal conspiracy (she, along with her husband, pleaded guilty to bribing the University of Southern California to the tune of $500,000), her case moved along a much different, longer timeline from Huffman's — and a longer timeline meant more headlines.
When Loughlin was released from prison in 2023 after serving a two-month prison sentence, Huffman's name was again noted in articles covering the development. Over three years after her release, the public was still being reminded of what she had done.
She's never been a box office draw
When it comes to Felicity Huffman's career, the other elephant in the room is the fact that she never really made a successful jump from film to television. One medium isn't better than the other (especially in the current age of entertainment), but her confinement to the world of TV only further limits her ability to be cast in future projects. Her most successful film in terms of critical response was the 2005 feature "Transamerica," in which she played a trans woman (in 2023 that might get you canceled, but in 2005 that got you an Oscar nomination).
"Transamerica" was also successful financially thanks in large part to its small budget. However, Huffman has never been a bankable name compared to other stars when it comes to securing box office results, with her entire filmography grossing just over $150 million domestically — and if you only count films in which she was a lead, that number plummets to below $19 million. Box office analysis website The Numbers ranks Huffman 17,430th in terms of worldwide aggregate gross. Meanwhile, her "most productive collaborators" Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Allen (both of whom Huffman acted with in "Christmas with the Kranks") are ranked 950th and 62nd, respectively.
Her comeback television project has seen no progress in years
After Felicity Huffman was released from prison and completed her supervised release without incident, many wondered when — or perhaps if — she would eventually try to make a comeback as an actor. She is, after all, a performer by trade, and in any similar circumstance, no one would bat an eye at someone trying to return to their day job after serving their time. But this is the image-obsessed entertainment industry we're talking about, and no one was quite sure if Huffman's professed contrition would be enough to detoxify her in the eyes of weary executives.
Curious minds seemingly got an answer in November 2020, when it was announced that Huffman had joined the core cast of an upcoming ABC series about a minor league baseball team. Inspired by the life story of Sacramento River Cats owner Susan Savage, this untitled sitcom was to be written by Becky Hartman Edwards ("Firefly Lane," "The Bold Type") and would also star "The Peanut Butter Falcon" actor Zack Gottsagen as Huffman's son.
As of writing, however, three years have passed without any update on the project whatsoever — not even the announcement of a title or a release window. Though one should never say never in fickle TV land, it's probably safe to say the project is not moving forward — especially since ABC has already passed on another Huffman-led project.
ABC passed on her Good Doctor spin-off series
In 2023, after more than three years since her release from federal prison and more than four years since her last acting role, Felicity Huffman finally made her return to acting in an episode of "The Good Doctor." Titled "The Good Lawyer," the episode was meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential spin-off series of the same name. Huffman was cast as a senior lawyer and legal mentor to the series' titular character, a young lawyer with obsessive-compulsive disorder (played by "Nancy Drew" star Kennedy McMann).
As we reported at the time, however, fans of "The Good Doctor" weren't too keen on seeing Huffman involved with the series. Fortunately for them (and unfortunately for everyone who worked on the show), ABC ultimately passed on "The Good Lawyer." Both it and "The Rookie: Feds" were dropped during the extended limbo of the joint SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, which entertainment outlets largely characterized as the motivating factor behind the network's decision not to pick up either series.
She still defends her involvement in the Varsity Blues scandal
With Lori Loughlin out of prison and finally coming to the end of her own "Varsity Blues" journey, 2023 seemed like the first year that Felicity Huffman was poised not to be ambushed by further coverage about the college admissions scandal. Especially after she ripped off the "first role since her 2019 arrest" band-aid with "The Good Doctor," there was a chance that she could be talked about in entertainment spaces without immediately noting that she had helped corrupt standardized testing in favor of rich people. But for some reason, Huffman chose to "break her silence" on the ordeal in a December 2023 interview with ABC 7 Eyewitness News.
Possibly as a play to help restore her career, she not only brought her criminal conspiracy charge back into public discussion with the interview, but used it as an opportunity to downplay her involvement. "People assume that I went into this looking for a way to cheat the system and [was] making proverbial criminal deals in back alleys, but that was not the case," she stated to the outlet. She then went on to explain how she merely trusted a "highly recommended college counselor" who successfully convinced her that her daughter had no chance of getting into the schools she wanted.
"It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future ... which meant I had to break the law," she said. But, in the words of the judge who sentenced Huffman, "Most parents have the moral compass and integrity not to step over the line. The defendant did not."