Actress Lori Loughlin is back on Instagram, seven years after she deleted her account amid the college admissions scandal that upended her career.
“Wake up, San Francisco! I’m back on IG 💕,” Loughlin wrote on Aug. 31, alongside a video that reunited her with her FULL HOUSE family.
The clip brought back actors John Stamos, Dave Coulier and Scott Weinger, along with actresses Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber, all reprising the sitcom’s signature wake-up call for one more take. Archival footage of the late actor Bob Saget rounded out the reunion.
Coulier answered in the comments with a line just as warm. “Love this! And love you!❤️” he wrote.
Even Loughlin’s daughter, Isabella Rose Giannulli, got a laugh in. She pointed out that her mother hadn’t followed her back yet, a small joke about a big gap.
Loughlin, 62, deleted her account in March 2019, days after federal prosecutors accused her and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, of paying $500,000 to get daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose into the University of Southern California as fake crew recruits. The couple pleaded guilty in 2020. Loughlin served two months in federal prison, paid a fine and completed community service.
Related: Lori Loughlin Doesn’t Take Her Career for Granted — Here’s Why
“I am truly, profoundly and deeply sorry, and I need to face the consequences and make amends,” Loughlin said before her sentencing.
Movieguide® has followed her road back ever since. We reported that Loughlin turned to prayer and church services during her time at a federal prison in Dublin, California, and later that she called herself “grateful for the second chance” Hollywood eventually handed her.
That gratitude has had years to prove itself out. Loughlin rebuilt quietly through smaller Hallmark and Great American Family movies before landing back in the role that mattered most to fans: Abigail Stanton on WHEN CALLS THE HEART, the character Hallmark wrote off the show entirely in 2019.
Hallmark’s head of programming, Michelle Vicary, framed the decision to bring Abigail back as a matter of what the network stands for as much as ratings. “Since the series’ debut in 2014, the character of Abigail Stanton was a fan favorite and beloved by the Hearties,” Vicary said. “At its core, the Hallmark brand is about hope, positivity and connection.”
Loughlin credited the fans themselves for the outcome, calling her return an emotional one.
“I would just like to say to the fans, thank you for your support over the years, it really means a lot,” Loughlin said of her return for the show’s fourteenth season, which begins filming this year and airs in 2027. “And thank you for championing my coming back because they heard you, and I appreciate that.”
She isn’t waiting that long to reach screens again, either. GARAGE SALE MYSTERIES: MURDER TAKES THE STAGE, her next movie in a Hallmark franchise Movieguide® has followed closely, premieres Sept. 19.
None of this erases 2019, and Movieguide® isn’t interested in pretending it does. But a public return to social media, timed to a public return to the work she loves, suggests Loughlin sees this chapter as more than image repair. Scripture doesn’t promise Hollywood comebacks, but it does promise that consequences and grace can occupy the same story — and for a woman who once admitted she’d let herself be “swayed from my moral compass,” a wake-up call from old friends is a fitting way back in.
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