Sofia Richie made it clear she still supports her friend Olivia Jade Giannulli following a contentious conversation on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk on Tuesday.
After Oliva Jade shared a snippet of the interview about her participation in the college admissions bribery scandal on her Instagram page, Sofia jumped into the comments with words of encouragement, though she was swiftly attacked by other users.
‘Yes girl!! Cant wait for what’s ahead,’ the 22-year-old model initially gushed about the clip, in which her friend said she wasn’t trying to ‘victimize’ herself and didn’t want ‘pity.’
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The sentiment didn’t sit well with some, include one user who claimed Sofia’s comment was an example of her privilege.
‘@sofiarichie white privilege supporting white privilege,’ they wrote, adding a clown emoji at the end.
Multiple people also commented, with some of them claiming that Sofia, whose father Lionel Richie is Black, couldn’t be the beneficiary of white privilege.
Hours later, Sofia returned with a rejoinder: ‘we are all human, who make human mistakes. Life is too short to wish negativity on anyone. Sending you love.’
Olivia Jade’s presence at the red table was hotly opposed by Jada’s mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones, who tore into her at the start of the show before she came out.
‘I fought it tooth and nail. I just found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story,’ she told Jada, 49, and her granddaughter, Willow Smith, 20.
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‘I feel like here we are, [a] white woman coming to Black women for support when we don’t get the same from them. Her being here is the epitome of white privilege to me.’
Although Jada was understanding, she replied, ‘I never want to be the thing that was done to me by white women.’
Olivia appeared to obfuscate any possible knowledge of her parents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli’s attempts to get her into the University of Southern California by lying about her participation on a non-existent rowing team, in hopes that she would be accepted as an athletic prospect.
According to the Los Angeles Times, an assistant US attorney wrote in a memo on prison sentence recommendations for her parents that Olivia Jade had spoken with them about ‘how to avoid the possibility that a high school counsellor would disrupt their scheme.’
She claimed to Jada and her family that she was ‘confused’ about the application process and she claimed that ‘I didn’t really 100 per cent understand what just had happened.’
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She also finally offered a passive-tense apology, claiming she couldn’t earlier because of ‘the legalities behind it.’
