Red Table Talk’s Adrienne Banfield-Norris says Olivia Jade Giannulli interview was ‘frustrating’

It was the first time she spoke out about the major college scandal in which her family is embroiled.

But one of the hosts of Olivia Jade Giannulli’s first interview, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, is speaking out about her feelings on that episode of Red Table Talk, calling it ‘frustrating’.

The former nurse, 67, visited the Keep It podcast on Wednesday, where she commented the chat that took place earlier this month between herself, daughter Jada Pinkett Smith, granddaughter Willow Smith and Giannulli.

‘It was frustrating, but at the end of the day, I felt like people understood how I felt,’ Adrienne said on the podcast. 

‘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.’ 

During the somewhat charged interview on her Facebook Watch series on December 8th, Banfield-Norris expressed that she did not have the ‘energy to put into the fact that you lost your endorsements,’ and that ‘it’s difficult to feel compassionate.’

At the time, Olivia Jade referred to herself as the ‘poster-child of privilege’ during the chat, and tried to apologize for her and her family’s actions without explaining things away or ‘shifting blame’.

There was also a sense from the former YouTube influencer that she was previously ‘oblivious’ to her privileged position, and it took the public Varsity Blues scandal to open her eyes.

On the podcast this week, Norris commented further: ‘I heard people make comments, like, “Well, kids don’t watch the news.” Please. The news on TV is not the only place where you understand what’s going on with the world and if you think that then you’re old! Because young people are not relying on the news — my generation is not relying on the news. I’m on my phone, on social media all the time.’

‘There’s just a lot of education she needs to do for herself,’ Adrienne continued. ‘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 and older sister Isabella Rose are the daughters of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli – two of the well-to-do defendants in last year’s far-reaching college admissions scandal that put them both in prison for short terms, which they are still carrying out.  

Lori reported to a prison facility in Dublin, California near San Francisco at the end of October. 

There were reports that she might be released on Christmas Day, but TMZ maintains that she will not be out until next Monday, the 28th.  

Mossimo, meanwhile, is serving out his five month jail term at a different facility, in Lompoc, which is closer to Santa Barbara.

The famous parents were arrested in March of 2019 for allegedly paying $500,000 in bribes to assure their daughters’ admission into the University of Southern California, while also misleading the admissions committee into believing that the girls were on a rowing team.