Not holding back. Jada Pinkett Smith‘s mom, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, has mixed feelings about Olivia Jade Giannulli’s recent Red Table Talk appearance.
Earlier this month, the YouTube personality, 21, stopped by the Facebook Watch series to give her first interview since the college scandal broke in March 2019. During a recent episode of Crooked Media’s “Keep It” podcast, Banfield-Norris, 67, admitted that she found the conversation surrounding Giannulli’s revelations “frustrating.”
“At the end of the day, I felt like people understood how I felt,” Banfield-Norris explained on Wednesday, December 23. “There were some things about it that were a little frustrating. I felt like as a 21-year-old young adult, that she needed to be way more aware of what’s going on in the world, and that was a little frustrating.”
While the nurse felt like Giannulli “handled the situation well,” she still thinks that the California native could benefit from diversifying her outlook.
“There’s just a lot of education she needs to do for herself,” Banfield-Norris said. “But I understand that that’s the world they’re in. Her life experiences have not put her in the space where she needs to be concerned about those kinds of things, really. I don’t really know how to address that because it is about how you’re raised and what you’re exposed to.”
Olivia Jade’s parents — Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli — were arrested in March 2019 after being accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to the University of Southern California. Olivia Jade and her sister, Bella, were accepted to the college as crew recruits despite never having played the sport.
The Full House alum, 56, and her husband, 57, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in May after previously claiming that they were innocent. Five months later, Loughlin reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, to complete her two-month prison sentence. Mossimo, for his part, began his five-month sentence in November. The pair, who tied the knot in 1997, were also fined a total of $400,000.
During her candid Red Table Talk appearance, Olivia Jade apologized for her parents’ actions and acknowledged that she had an advantage over other students who may have worked harder for their spot at the same school
“We had the means to do something and we completely took it and ran with it. It was something that it was wrong,” the social media star said. “It really can’t be excused. On paper, it’s bad — it’s really bad. But I think what a lot of people don’t know is my parents came from a place of just, ‘I love my kids I just want to help my kids — whatever is best for them — I worked my whole life to provide for my family.’ I think they thought it was normal.”
At the time, Banfield-Norris put Olivia Jade on blast and said she was “the epitome of white privilege.”
“She chose three black women to reach out to for her redemption story. I feel like, here we are, [a] white woman coming to back women for support when we don’t get the same from them,” the actress told her daughter, 49, and granddaughter, Willow Smith. “It’s just bothersome to me on so many levels. … You guys will go on and you’ll be OK, and you will live your life. There’s so many of us that it is not going to be that situation. It makes it very difficult right now for me to care.”
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