Tyra Banks is defending the controversial decision to cast Olivia Jade Giannulli on Season 30 of “Dancing With the Stars.”
In doing so, the host of the celebrity TV dance competition is ignoring federal prosecutors’ evidence that Olivia Jade knew her parents, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, had arranged for her to be fraudulently admitted to the University of Southern California.
Banks told Entertainment Tonight that she thinks the influencer is “so brave” for competing on the show, despite all the backlash she’s receiving. Banks also said she “trusts” that the 21-year-old didn’t know about her parents’ scheme — simply because she said so.
“She has said that she did not know about what was going on and it’s really sad, and it’s very hurtful when something publicly happens but you had nothing to do with it,” Banks told Entertainment Tonight “So I trust that she says she didn’t know.”
Banks apparently hasn’t reviewed the evidence of Olivia Jade’s alleged complicity, which was made public by federal prosecutors when they laid out their case against Loughlin and Giannulli in 2020.
The evidence shows that the former “Full House” star and her fashion designer husband enlisted Olivia Jade and her older sister, Isabella, in their bribery scheme.
If nothing else, the federal case shows that Olivia Jade and Isabella, who were high school students at the time, knew they were being admitted to USC as talented crew team recruits on false pretenses because neither had ever rowed competitively.
Loughlin and Giannulli pleaded guilty in May 2020 to charges of paying a total of $500,000 to college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer and his two alleged accomplices at USC. Loughlin was sentenced to two months in federal prison, a sentence she completed in December 2020. Giannulli finished his five-month sentence in April.
For the bribery scheme, Singer arranged for fake athletic profiles to be created for Olivia Jade and Isabella, and presented to USC admissions officials.
In one of the more infamous revelations of the entire college admissions scandal, Singer asked Loughlin and Giannulli to have Olivia Jade and Isabella pose on rowing machines for photos that could be included with the fake profiles. Court records show that the profiles falsely described each of the sisters as talented recruits for the university’s crew team.
When Giannulli sent Singer a photo of Isabella on a rowing machine in 2016. he copied Isabella in on the email, prosecutors said in a memo ahead of Loughlin and Giannulli’s sentencing.
When it came time for Olivia Jade to apply for USC in 2018, Loughlin, who played wholesome Aunt Becky on “Full House,” instructed her how to “not say too much to her high school’s college counselor” about her application, “lest (the counselor) catch on to their fraud,” the memo said.
When she was in high school, Olivia Jade publicly admitted to caring more about being a YouTube star and social media influencer than academics.
Loughlin, Giannulli and Olivia Jade specifically discussed how to avoid the possibility that a high school counselor would disrupt their scheme, the memo said. When Olivia Jade asked whether she should list USC as her top choice school, Loughlin replied: “Yes . . . But it might be a flag for the weasel to meddle.” Giannulli added: “(Expletive) him,” and called the counselor a “nosy bastard.”
Loughlin thereafter instructed her daughter: “Don’t say too much to that man.”
In March 2018, the counselor advised a USC admissions official that he had “no knowledge of (Olivia Jade’s) involvement in crew and based on what I knew of her video blogging schedule, I highly doubted she was involved in crew.”
After getting wind of the counselor’s concerns, Giannulli rushed to Olivia Jade’s high school to confront him, the memo shows. Contemporaneous notes of the meeting show that Giannulli “aggressively asked what (the counselor) was telling USC about his daughters and why (the counselor) was trying to ruin or get in the way of their opportunities.” Giannulli “bluntly stated that (Olivia Jade) was a (crew) coxswain.”
When the new season of “Dancing With the Stars” premieres, Olivia Jade will “tell her story and show her vulnerability,” Banks said.
Olivia Jade has faced mixed reactions from the public when she’s tried to show her vulnerability before, notably during her appearance on “Red Table Talk” in December 2020. Co-hosts Jada Pinkett Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris were divided on whether Olivia Jade showed true remorse for her family’s actions or understanding of what she herself describes as her “white privilege.”
Olivia Jade spoke of her shame, while also trying to downplay her complicity in her parents’ scheme.
“I felt so ashamed and embarrassed … although I didn’t really 100 percent understand what had just happened because there was a lot that, when I was applying, I was not fully aware of what was going on,” Olivia Jade said on the show.
But she at least admitted that she realized she didn’t deserve to be a student at USC. “I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, clearly,” she said.
