Felicity Huffman Set For A TV Return In Good Doctor Spinoff

Felicity Huffman will be making her first TV reappearance in March since her prison stint in connection to her college admission scandal.

The 60-year-old actress will be playing a guest role on The Good Lawyer, a legal spinoff of the ABC drama, The Good Doctor. The spinoff is set to air during the sixth season of The Good Doctor on March 6.

Felicity will play the character of Janet Stewart, a prominent attorney and partner at the law firm with dry wit and a fierce intellect.

Her character, Janet Stewart, will be the accomplished attorney representing Freddie Highmore’s character, Dr. Shaun Murphy, who is looking to win a case in the episode. However, the Desperate Housewives star will be shortly replaced by a young lawyer, Joni DeGroot (the character of 26-year-old Kennedy McMann), when Dr. Shaun decides he prefers Joni as his legal counsel.

This new TV role is coming only two years after Felicity completed her full sentence concerning her involvement with the college admission scandal. The conviction included jail time, community service, and a supervised release.

When the news broke in 2019, the mom of two was charged after investigations were completed by the Justice Department. 

She pleaded guilty in May 2019 to paying admissions consultant Rick Singer $15,000 to use a proctor to rig her daughter Sophia’s SAT answers. She was sentenced to a 14-day jail time (of which she was released after 11 days), 250 hours of community service, a fine of $30,000 for compliance with fraud, and a one-year supervision post-release.

Although it was reported that her husband, William H. Macy had worked with her to fix the SAT scores, he was acquitted. Yet, the actress was not the only one who took a fall for the fraud. The college admission mastermind, Rick Singer, got a 3.5-year jail time.

Throughout the time the scandal lasted, Felicity Huffman appeared in three different projects: Ava Duvernay’s miniseries When They See Us, released in May 2019; Netflix’s Otherhood dropped in July 2019; and Tommy’s Always Dying, the comedy film directed by Amy Jo Johnson that was released on May 1, 2020.

Felicity Huffman is not the only celebrity convicted for a college admission scandal that has returned onscreen. Lori Loughlin, another star caught in the admission scandal, has since landed her first movie role in Great American Family’s Fall Into Winter.