''The College Admissions Scandal'' is a 2019 TV film that aired on Lifetime as part of its "Ripped from the Headlines" feature film. The film is based on the

2019 college admissions bribery scandal Operation Varsity Blues was the code name for the investigation into the 2019 criminal conspiracy scandal to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities. United States federal prosecutors made the invest ...

and stars

Penelope Ann Miller Penelope Ann Miller (born Penelope Andrea Miller; January 13, 1964), sometimes credited as Penelope Miller, is an American actress. She began her career on Broadway in the original run of '' Biloxi Blues'' (1985–1986), later appearing in the ...

, Mia Kirshner, and

Michael Shanks Michael Garrett Shanks (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian actor. He is best known for his role as Daniel Jackson in the long-running military science fiction television series ''Stargate SG-1'' and as Dr Charles Harris in the Canadian medi ...

. It tells a fictional account of the event that involves two fictional characters.

Premise

Caroline DeVere (

) and Bethany Slade ( Mia Kirshner) are two wealthy mothers. Caroline is an interior designer and Bethany owns a financial services firm. When they want their teenagers to get into a college, they resort to paying Rick Singer (

) to get them in.

Cast

as Caroline DeVere * Mia Kirshner as Bethany Slade *

as Rick Singer * Sam Duke as Danny DeVere * Sarah Dugdale as Emma Slade *

Robert Moloney Robert Moloney is a Canadian actor, best known for playing Professor ''Alistair Gryffen'' in the TV series '' K-9''. Life and career Moloney was trained at the Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia where he took the theatre Arts progr ...

as Jackson DeVere *

Catherine Lough Haggquist Catherine Lough Haggquist is a Canadian actress, producer and entrepreneur. She has over 125 acting credits on film and television, including three seasons as Inspector Nora Harris on the sci-fi television series '' Continuum'' and recurring rol ...

as Erica Valdez * Kendra Westwood as Carla Pontrell

Production

On September 5, 2019,

ET Online ''Entertainment Tonight'' (or simply ''ET'') is an American first-run syndicated news broadcasting newsmagazine program that is distributed by CBS Media Ventures throughout the United States and owned by Paramount Streaming. Having premiered on ...

reported that characters in the film would be depicted by actresses Mia Kirshner and

in roles inspired by

Lori Loughlin Lori Anne Loughlin (; born July 28, 1964) is an American actress. From 1988 to 1995, she played List of Full House and Fuller House characters#Rebecca Donaldson Katsopolis, Rebecca Donaldson Katsopolis on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC ...

's and

Felicity Huffman Felicity Kendall Huffman (born December 9, 1962) is an American actress. She is known for her role as Lynette Scavo in the ABC comedy-drama ''Desperate Housewives'' and her role as Sabrina "Bree" Osbourne, a transgender woman, in the film ''Trans ...

's involvement in the college admissions matter. Describing her role, Kirshner was quoted saying, "This story is about privilege and corruption and it's about people who don't follow the rules because they think they're above rules... My character (based on Loughlin but named "Bethany" in the film) is so corrupt, greedy, narcissistic, self-centered, and the dialogue is hilarious, so I'm glad that they're able to capture humor about this as well."

Reception

The film premiered with a 719,000 viewers. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film scored based on reviews. On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film scored a 57 based on 7 critic reviews. Gwen Ihnat of The A.V. Club gave the film a C+.

References

External links

* * 2019 television films 2019 films Lifetime (TV channel) films Films set in universities and colleges Films with screenplays by Stephen Tolkin Films about academic scandals Films directed by Adam Salky {{US-tv-film-stub