Emmy Rossum Talks About Playing Fiona Gallagher
At only 25 years old, actress and singer Emmy Rossum has already done so much. She started her film career playing fragile innocent girls, like her critically acclaimed performances in “Mystic River” and “Phantom of the Opera.” She also had memorable roles in big budget disaster films like “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Poseidon.” Now she’s on Showtime in the hit series “Shameless” in a role that swings in a completely different direction. She stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about Season Two of “Shameless.” Below are some excerpts from the interview.
Ron Bennington: Big, big fan of your TV show, but I have to say this: The first episode I was always wondering, “Can I even stay with this show? This guy is so mean to these kids, can I stay with it?” But the show, you pick up on it very, very quickly that I don’t think of the kids as victims at all.
Emmy Rossum: No, and I don’t think we try to play it that way, I mean lots of people grow up with bad parents, shitty parents, MIA parents, so we’re just showing something like that.
Ron Bennington: And the weird thing is with your character who would’ve had one life, kind of moves over because that’s what she has to do to protect—there’s like a maternal feeling that I think some young girls just have to take care of.
Emmy Rossum: Well I think when there’s a void if you’re a good, strong person you step in and fill it and I think when we’re showing a family of six kids in Chicago on the South Side, mom’s run off with a lesbian lover and dad’s a severe alcoholic—but it’s a comedy—my character is the oldest of her six siblings so she kind of is everybody’s parent, including her dad’s parent.
Ron Bennington: Right, but what is she giving up herself with that?
Emmy Rossum: She didn’t finish high school, she doesn’t have a job—I mean she has eight jobs, but she has no real feasible career or future because she’s sacrificing for the younger kids to stay in school and provide for them.
Ron Bennington: Do you think there’s going to be a certain time for her though?
Emmy Rossum: Yeah, I think we’re starting to see it this season; the kids are starting to grow up a little bit so we’re seeing her kind of try to get control. Right now what’s happening in the beginning of the second season is she’s nursing a broken heart which means she’s sleeping around. That’s her way of nursing her broken heart which makes for some funny encounters. So we’ll see her try to go back to school and try to get a job and realize that she’s not qualified for that and what that means.
Ron Bennington: Now when you know that you’re doing a TV show with a guy like William H. Macy, it had to be—because I was surprised that he took a TV show at the time, and I really expected it to be the William H. Macy Show when I first turned it on, but it doesn’t take you long to see that this is really an ensemble piece and the kids are unbelievable. The kids are phenomenal, even the little kids.
Emmy Rossum: Yeah, they’re great, and some of them weren’t actors before this, or they had limited experience. They’re very natural, they’re very connected to their feelings and they just draw those feelings right up.
Ron Bennington: The little ones had never acted before?
Emmy Rossum: The young boy, Ethan Cutkosky, he’d been in a few films, but Emma Kenney who plays Debbie is 12 from New Jersey—
Ron Bennington: She’s phenomenal, seriously.
Emmy Rossum: She’s phenomenal and she hasn’t really been in anything, so it’s pretty amazing.
Ron Bennington: And like I said, these kids get as much of a story as William H. Macy who was the name coming into this. How is it working with a guy like that that’s been around so long and done so many great things?
Emmy Rossum: We call him Bill. He’s just Bill and he’s fun, he’s fun to be around, he brings out his ukulele all the time, we play, and we have fun and he’s crazy and silly, and you know, we’ll ask the kids if they think something is funny that he’s doing in a scene and if they say no, he’ll change it. He’s so open to people’s comments and I just think that he sets such a good example. He comes in knowing every line. We don’t have sides on set, we’re supposed to know every line of every scene we’re doing that day so when we walk in we run the lines once and then we shoot it. Everyone’s very on top of it, even the little kids.
Ron Bennington: Why did you do the TV show? Here you had done movies and got the Golden Globe and then Broadway and everybody was saying that the sky’s the limit for you, but no one expected you to take a character like this and go in this direction.
Emmy Rossum: Because this was the best character that I’d read in a long time and I didn’t really care—I think people a couple years ago thought TV was lesser quality than film, but I don’t think it is now. The best writers are in TV, the best directors are going to TV, I think you’re seeing the best actors come over to TV, like Macy. So many people are taking TV shows so I think that a lot of the great work is being done on cable so for me it was a no-brainer.
Ron Bennington: Yeah, because now after that, it really doesn’t matter where you go. And plus so many Hollywood movies, you don’t get to do the kind of acting that you guys are doing.
Emmy Rossum: Right, there are lots of explosions and fast cuts and not as much character development. With this you get to see the lifespan of a character over years. People get to live with them, grow up with them, know them as people, and you get to play their story and their sensitivities a lot longer.
Ron Bennington: At what point did you know, Hey, I’m going to be acting and not just singing? Was there a point that you were always going to do both?
Emmy Rossum: I don’t know, I wanted to be an actor only because I couldn’t sing at the opera anymore when I was 11 because I had grown too tall for the children’s costumes so I didn’t want to leave being on the stage, and I loved it, and I thought I’d look in the Yellow Pages and find an agent, and I’d read in The New York Times that Matt LeBlanc had this acting teacher, Flo Greenberg, so I found her in the Yellow Pages, and I got an acting teacher, and found a monologue and read it for an agent, and took a cab over to the – I mean I was, you know, I was a little bit like Debbie on our show. I was very forward thinking.
Ron Bennington: Yeah you were a pushy kid. Plus it helps that you grew up in Manhattan because if you grew up in Iowa…
Emmy Rossum: I wouldn’t have had any of the opportunities or exposure to that training and that kind of thing, yeah.
Ron Bennington: What happened when you moved out west though?
Emmy Rossum: Well I moved out west—I’ve lived on the West Coast on and off for a couple of years, and I definitely prefer the East Coast, but now we shoot all of our interiors in LA and then all of our exteriors in Chicago so I’m a bit of a nomad.
Ron Bennington: That’s got to be the strangest thing too, to shoot one part of a scene in LA—
Emmy Rossum: If there’s an argument and she storms out of the house and is arguing outside, then we shoot the inside part of the argument in LA and then we have to take that tape so we remember what it was like, and then we shoot the walking out the house arguing on the street in Chicago.
Ron Bennington: You also keep the singing career going, we played one of your songs coming in and you toured a couple of years ago with the Counting Crows and you’ve done all kinds of cool stuff, sang on Broadway. Is there a type of music for you?
Emmy Rossum: I think something probably—I don’t know, we’re always evolving and changing and that definitely changes with it. Wow, that’s a stock answer. But I don’t know, I think that—yeah there is, I think I’m still finding it. I think it’s probably closer to what I grew up with. Classical, something a little more classical.
Ron Bennington: And that will never go away. The music will never go away for you?
Emmy Rossum: No, because it was my first form of expression, and creative, and energy, and I loved it and I still do.
Ron Bennington: So when you grew up in all of this, are there people who you could still meet now that blow you away, or do you just feel like, We’re all in the same business together?
Emmy Rossum: No, of course, you have your idols and people who you get star struck by, like Dolly Parton or Tim Robbins, somebody like that, both of whom I’ve met and were giddy about.
Ron Bennington: Parton would be surprising to me because that’s far away from classical and it’s a whole different way of singing.
Emmy Rossum: But that’s real technique, that’s real singing technique, that’s real showmanship. I mean, she has Dollywood, she’s created a theme park around her fantasticness.
Ron Bennington: So this is kind of cool for you, that so many of these venues are open to you.
Emmy Rossum: Yeah, it’s just exciting. I’m lucky that I can do different things, and if the whole acting thing goes away and we become a world of Pixar where they don’t need actors anymore and it’s all Avatar, I guess I’ll go on the road and sing showtunes.
Ron Bennington: Well, Shameless is just such a terrific show, so much going on with it and we were talking about some of the people who you’re working with and how that’s all come together, and I don’t see a weak hand in the whole place right now. Thanks so much for stopping by.
Emmy Rossum: Thank you.
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You can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
You can follow Emmy on Twitter @emmyrossum and you can follow Shameless @SHO_Shameless. You can also visit the official Shameless website here.
