Olivia Jade Giannulli made her “Dancing with the Stars” debut on Monday and her sister, Isabella, was in the crowd to cheer her on.
The YouTube influencer, who has spent the better part of the last two years steeped in the college admissions scandal, debuted for the first time on Season 30 of the hit competition show alongside her professional dancing partner, Val Chmerkovskiy.
Us Weekly notes that after her first dance, the camera cut to her sister who was dutifully cheering her on from the stands. While Season 29 did not have an audience due to the coronavirus pandemic, Season 30 kicked off with a limited live crowd mostly composed of the celebrities’ friends and family. Guests like Isabella had to be masked, vaccinated and had tested negative before entering the set so as to stave off any potential outbreak, the outlet reports.
Isabella’s presence in the audience wasn’t a surprise to those paying close attention to Olivia Jade in recent weeks. After it was announced that she was one of the many stars joining Season 30 of “DWTS,” she told reporters that her older sister was insisting on being in the crowd for every single performance.
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Olivia Jade Gianulli’s sister is cheering her on from the stands of ‘Dancing with the Stars.’
(Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images for Sephora Collection)
During the first episode, Olivia Jade wasn’t shy about acknowledging the scandal that her name has been synonymous with since 2019.
“The last few years I’ve been wrapping up in a scandal,” she said during the premiere. “I did step back from social media and just soak in what everybody was saying. I’m not trying to pull a pity card, I just need to step forward and do better.”
In addition to Olivia Jade, Bella was also swept up in the scandal after it came to light that her parents paid $500,000 to scam mastermind William “Rick” Singer to get the girls recruited to the University of Southern California’s crew team despite neither girl previously participating in the sport.
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In December, Loughlin finished serving two months behind bars for her role in the scandal. Loughlin agreed to serve two months and pay a $150,000 fine along with two years of supervised release and 100 hours of community service. Her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, meanwhile, was ordered to pay a $250,000 fine with two years of supervised release and 250 hours of community service in addition to a five-month prison sentence. He got out of prison in April.
Olivia Jade previously broke her silence on the matter during an appearance on the Facebook Watch series “Red Table Talk” in which she apologized for her family’s actions but noted that she believes she deserves a second chance.
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“I think that what hasn’t been super public is that there is no justifying or excusing what happened because what happened was wrong. And I think every single person in my family can be like, ‘That was messed up. That was a big mistake,’” she said at the time. “But I think what’s so important to me is to learn from the mistake, not to now be shamed and punished and never given a second chance because I’m 21. I feel like I deserve a second chance to redeem myself, to show I’ve grown.”
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“I’m not trying to victimize myself. I don’t want pity. I don’t deserve pity. We messed up. I just want a second chance to be like I recognize I messed up. And for so long I wasn’t able to talk about this because of the legalities behind it. I never got to say I’m really sorry that this happened or I really own that this was a big mess-up on everybody’s part. But I think everybody feels that way in my family right now,” Olivia added later in the interview.