When the Operation Varsity Blues story broke a few months ago, Olivia Jade Giannulli was on spring break from USC. She was spending her spring break on a yacht called Invictus. Invictus belongs to…*drumroll*… the chairman of the Board of Trustees for USC. As soon as Olivia’s parents were arrested, that dude sent her home. But she didn’t stay at home – from what I can tell, Olivia has not spent one night at her family home since her parents’ arrests. She was reportedly staying with her boyfriend in Malibu. She’s been partying up a storm too, despite the fact that she’s likely being investigated for her role in the federal crimes committed by getting her dumb ass into college. Anyway, Olivia Jade has now made it formal: she’s moved out of her parents’ house and she’s setting herself up somewhere else.
Lori Loughlin‘s daughter Olivia Jade is looking for a change of scenery — and some privacy. Olivia Jade, 19, has moved out of her parents’ Bel-Air mansion to help escape the media circus over their alleged involvement in the college admissions scandal.
“Olivia is doing well. What’s going on with her parents is still upsetting to her, but she is also trying to focus on her own life as well,” a source tells PEOPLE. “Her parents still face a lot of media attention. There is paparazzi at the family house every day. It’s very stressful for everyone. Olivia has decided to move out for now. She doesn’t want to be followed when she leaves her home.”
Her rep had no comment when reached by PEOPLE. The source adds that Olivia Jade is working to rebuild her once-booming social media business and turning to her closest friends for support. (She lost several partnerships and endorsement deals after the scandal broke.)
“She wants to focus on rebuilding her business,” the source says. “She spends time with friends and other vloggers that inspire her.”
Any “starlet” in the midst of this kind of controversy would have found a way to profit from it by now – paid interviews, shady sponsorship deals, signing up for her own reality show. The fact that Olivia has gone radio silent on social media and that she doesn’t seem to be signing any deals leads me to believe that she has zero clue about how to hustle and leverage her bad press and make lemonade out of lemons. She’s a privileged white girl who had everything handed to her on a plate, including her college acceptance. Surely NOW is not the best time for Olivia to learn how to hustle to make a living.
Meanwhile, CNN had a curious story about Lori Loughlin and Mossimo – CNN’s sources told them that Lori and Mossimo have been approaching crisis managers with an eye towards image-rehabilitation. One of the unnamed crisis managers told CNN:
“She [Loughlin] has been having preliminary talks with some top crisis management firms on what she can do to change the public perception. I truly believe she thinks she’s going to not serve jail time and return to work…It’s killing her that her squeaky clean reputation has done a total 180… She reads everything that’s written about her, and she’s already thinking about how she can turn her image around.”
Lori’s publicist goes on to deny that Lori and Mossimo are bringing in some image experts, but honestly, they need someone telling them that their current PR narrative sucks. Whoever told Lori to lean into the “faith-based” fake-ass churchy-wholesome-Hallmark thing has no sense of irony. And someone please tell her to take this seriously, because she truly does believe that she can wave away the federal indictments.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and WENN.
Let me guess — her parents are paying for the move, her parents are paying her rent, her parents bought her car, her parents will continue to fund her lifestyle while she “tries to focus on her own life.”
I can’t wait to never hear anything about this awful family that doesn’t involve punishing her parents. Sure, send them to prison — but I’d also sentence them to paying full college tuition to serious private universities for 100 qualified low-income students .
Half a billion in bribes and they had, “no idea it was wrong!” B.S.
Exactly! Focusing on her own life with mommy and daddy’s $$$, Olivia’s privileged a$$ is Not the victim here, the hardworking student whose spot was taken by her Is.
It was half a million. If it were $500 million they could have paid for a new building and got the kids in the old fashioned way, like Dr. Dre did.
Sorry. Very expensive typo.
Indeed million not billion!
“The fact that Olivia has gone radio silent on social media and that she doesn’t seem to be signing any deals leads me to believe that she has zero clue about how to hustle and leverage her bad press and make lemonade out of lemons.”
Are you joking? Seriously, if she *had* done that, you’d likely be hammering her for profiting off her situation. Privilege aside, it’s puzzling that you would advocate for some Next Level sociopathy for this girl. She’s doing exactly what she should be doing, regardless of whether she’s a “privileged white girl.”
I think Kaiser’s point is not that it would be morally acceptable to do so but what it says that she isn’t, despite how many other celebrities have managed to build careers out of negative press. It highlights how much of Olivia Jade’s success is manufactured by her parent’s money rather than any business savvy of her own.
Yep exactly
Not clear on how turning around a bad situation is “next level sociopathy”.
The point being made is that Olivia Jade is not a smart nor particularly hard working young woman. And the lack of smarts has been apparent throughout this entire situation. Which is the reason her parents are up to their neck in it entirely.
As a human, its pretty apparent that OJ is dumb, lazy and selfish and despite heavy branding otherwise , her parents aren’t really about moral character despite the Churchy/ Hallmark and Target 🎯 friendly personas they capitalize from for years prior to this.
She has gone radio silent because a team of attorneys has told her to do so. Her parents pled not guilty and she says the wrong thing and it will be used against them. The admissions application, the rowing pics they staged. One slip and they are (more) screwed than they are now.
It’s probably why she moved everything of hers out of their house, she is pissed at the restrictions.
I can already see where this is going. This girl will end up with her own reality show and become really famous and even richer. That’s how it usually happens. Being pretty, skinny, White, and having famous parents gets you very far in life now a days.
Man, what a selfish and terrible daughter. Her parents spent half a million dollars and did everything under the sun FOR HER. It was all for her. And now they’re paying for it (we hope)…and she’s basically going to spit in their face and say she’s angry with them? She should be contrite, and she should be kind to her parents. Yeah, they’re all a bunch of entitled jerks and I’m glad they were caught but the fact that Olivia Jade thinks she’s some sad victim of what her parents did to her? That is laughable. She was complicit the whole time and she stood to benefit from their fraud.
I guess they deserve the daughter they raised. If it were me I’d be by my mother’s side every second and supporting her emotionally as much as I could.
Her parents paid those bribes for their own egos. Olivia Jade might be as sharp as a sack of hammers, but she also made a dozen or so social media posts stating she had no interest in going to college. I get why the kid is upset. She leveraged her privilege into a gig as a social media influencer that paid fairly well. It may sound like a BS job, but it’s something people can do now. She came up with enough consistent content for her vlog to sustain millions of followers, ask anyone who works on this site how difficult feeding the content monster can be. And her parents’ selfish desire to send their kids to the “right” school undermined her work.
Totally agree with you. The kids got sucked into this mess because of the parents’ huge egos.
When has Olivia Jade done anything other than focus on her own life?