UPDATE: TMZ reported late Wednesday afternoon that Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli had been traveling in the Bahamas on a yacht owned by Rick Caruso, the chairman of the USC Board of Trustees.
Olivia Jade Giannulli is good friends with Caruso’s daughter and had spent spring break with her on the yacht. She also spent Tuesday night on the yacht, after federal prosecutors announced that her TV actress mother and fashion designer father, Mossimo Giannulli, had been indicted in a wide-ranging college admissions bribery scandal.
Caruso, a major Los Angeles real estate developer, will not have any say over Olivia Jade’s fate at USC. He said in a statement to TMZ: “My daughter and a group of students left for spring break prior to the government’s announcement yesterday. Once we became aware of the investigation, the young woman decided it would be in her best interests to return home.”
Original story follows:
TV actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, probably would say they were just trying to show their love for their daughters by allegedly paying $500,000 to bribe the girls’ way into the University of Southern California.
But now that Loughlin and Giannulli have been charged in federal court with bribery-related charges, their efforts on behalf of Isabella and Olivia Jade’s higher education at the selective Los Angeles university have made their rich and precociously self-promoting daughters targets of national outrage and internet mockery.
The parents’ alleged crimes also may have jeopardized their daughters’ places at USC — the one thing they so desperately coveted for them, according to a TMZ report.
The world now knows that aspiring actress Isabella Giannulli, 20, didn’t have the grades and test scores to get into USC, according to the complaint filed in federal court. Olivia Jade, 19, also admitted on her YouTube channel that going to school wasn’t a priority for her, that she mostly cared about vlogging and being a social media influencer.
Since the scandal broke, a number of celebrities and other national figures — including Rob Lowe, Kellyanne Conway and Meghan McCain — have derided the sisters for being “stupid,” or for not being hardworking like other people’s children, or for their father thinking they were too good for a state school like Arizona State University.
.@LoriLoughlin & @FelicityHuffman indicted for lying and buying spots in college.
They worried their daughters are as stupid as their mothers. https://t.co/cSBugdydmo
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) March 12, 2019
Multiple outlets, from the New York Times to Business Insider to Slate to BuzzFeed News, also have focussed on how the young women got into USC on the false pretense of being recruited to be on the university’s crew team.
Those same outlets also have reported on how the sisters, especially Olivia Jade, appeared to use their college-student status to help increase their social media influence and possibly the profitability of their popular Instagram accounts and YouTube channel. Olivia Jade’s Instagram and YouTube accounts have a combined 3.3 million followers, while Isabella has 260,000 followers on Instagram.
But now there appears to be more than public humiliation in store for the Giannulli sisters.
TMZ, citing well-connected sources, reported that USC is looking into the cases of students admitted to the school due to their parents’ bribery. Not all students will be evaluated in the same way, TMZ added. If students knew they were admitted because of bribes, they will be expelled. If the students didn’t know, the university will evaluate each student’s circumstance on a case-by-case basis.
It’s not clear whether the Giannulli sisters were aware of the alleged scam, according to the complaint. But they apparently posed for pictures with rowing machines to be sent to USC’s subcommittee for athletic admission, Slate added.
Meanwhile, Business Insider and the Hollywood Reporter questioned whether high-profile brands such as Amazon and Sephora would want to continue their partnerships with Olivia Jade, who has promoted their products on her social media accounts.
“The important thing to understand about the celebrity/influencer sponsorship space is that brands are very risk-averse,” Eric Dahan, CEO of Open Influence, an influencer marketing company, told the Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.
“Brands spend millions of dollars building up and defending their brand name, and understand that the wrong sponsorship can undo all of their hard work,” he added. “Typically, having a criminal record or any negative press makes an influencer radioactive in the eyes of an advertiser.”
One particular Instagram post by Olivia Jade may be especially troublesome for Amazon Prime, Business Insider said. In a photo from September, Olivia Jade talks up being a college student by sharing a photo of her sitting on a bed, apparently in her USC dorm room.
The caption says: “Officially a college student! It’s been a few weeks since I moved into my dorm and I absolutely love it. I got everything I needed from Amazon with @primestudent and had it all shipped to me in just two-days. #ad #primestudent#allonamazon.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn17xhEA4H_/
While Olivia Jade has not posted any content promoting Amazon Prime Student on Instagram since September, she has appeared to maintain a more active partnership with the beauty brand Sephora in recent months, Business Insider reported. Most recently in mid-January, Olivia Jade announced that she had collaborated with Sephora on releasing an “Olivia Jade collection” powder that was released in December.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BswRQDbn7_D/?utm_source=ig_embed
Business Insider and the Hollywood Reporter said that none of Olivia Jade’s brand partners had responded to requests for comment about whether they would continue their partnerships with her. Olivia Jade’s publicist, Elizabeth Much, told the Hollywood Reporter by email: “I have no information at this time.”
At her young age, Olivia Jade has already weathered controversy before, though not of this magnitude. She faced backlash for telling a fan in a August YouTube post, “I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.” She said she was mostly interested in going to college for “game days” and “partying.” She later apologized in a second video for her “super ignorant and stupid” remarks.
Since the scandal broke, Olivia Jade has disabled the comments on her Instagram account. They had become pretty vicious Tuesday. “Scam artist! Loser!” read one comment. “Your family is shameful!” posted another.
At this point, there is no telling how the scandal will affect Isabella’s career prospects. In a 2017 interview with Loughlin on “Today,” Isabella talked about how she was looking forward to acting in TV or movies. She had already appeared in TV movies with her mother, according to her IMDB page.
“I just love all of it,” Isabella said on “Today.” “I’d be happy to do anything.”
Slate writer Heather Schwedel noted that Isabella and Olivia Jade are prime targets for internet shaming in a culture that increasingly likes to sneer at rich people and at young people, especially at young women, who like to build careers and wealth on being social media influencers.
“Olivia Jade and Bella check all the right boxes for ridicule,” Schwedel wrote. She also added that it is difficult to imagine how either of the sisters, or their parents, will be able to spin this scandal for their advantage going forward.
Even a half-hearted YouTube apology from Olivia Jade might not cut it.
