“Shameless” star Emmy Rossum addressed her departure from the long-running Showtime drama on a recent “Call Her Daddy” podcast episode.
Rossum starred in “Shameless” as Fiona, the headstrong, eldest sibling of the Gallaghers, a Chicago family with an absent mother and alcoholic father. She left the show at the end of Season 9; the series continued for two more seasons. The show also starred William H. Macy, Jeremy Allen White, Ethan Cutkosky, Emma Kenney, Shanola Hampton, Cameron Monaghan, Steve Howey and more.
“We had made 110 episodes, and by the time I left and they offered us two more years, I had already started my production company,” Rossum told host Alex Cooper. “I had set up my first show [“Angelyne”], and I was greenlit and getting ready to make it.”
Rossum started a production company called Composition 8. With her company, she’s an executive producer on the upcoming Hulu series “Furious.” It premieres on the streamer on July 27. She stars as FBI agent Alice Black who is on the hunt for a female serial killer in New York City.
Rumors circulated that Rossum was leaving “Shameless” to start a family; she said “that could not be further from the truth.”
“I left to go make the show I had been developing, that our showrunner John Wells had encouraged me to kind of get in the driver’s seat of my own career and make my own shows and make things,” Rossum said, adding that she left with “a lot of grief and sorrow.”
She had directed two episodes of “Shameless” by the end of its run.
“I wanted to stay in the job. I loved the job. I wasn’t walking away from the job. I loved the job until it felt like there wasn’t enough juice to squeeze out of the lemon.”
Before Season 8 was set to begin filming, Rossum’s equal pay dispute made headlines. She was negotiating to make the same salary as Macy; in her final season, she was making $350,000 an episode. On the podcast, she said she thought the network might have leaked the dispute to the press.
“It’s a private business negotiation, and I never imagined it would become public. Not just for the public, but also for the rest of the cast and the crew,” she said.
But once the public weighed in on the pay disparity in Rossum’s favor, the network offered her a new contract — and she successfully negotiated an increase.
“It’s always scary asking for what you think you’re worth,” Rossum said. “To say, ‘I think this is what I’m worth,’ you have to take up space in the room.”
“Furious” streams its first three episodes on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ on Monday. The show will run weekly on Mondays through its finale on Aug. 31.
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