Years after her departure, Emmy Rossum has finally revealed the reason behind her exit from Shameless at the end of Season 9. Her final appearance in the series aired on March 10, 2019, in which she played the lead character, Fiona Gallagher.
Emmy Rossum says the headlines about her equal pay battle never told the entire story of her departure
During the July 8 episode of Call Her Daddy, Rossum addressed the rumors surrounding her decision to leave Shameless. The 39-year-old told Alex Cooper, as per Just Jared, “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.”
Describing it further, she said, “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. I had set up my first show [Angelyne], and I was greenlit and getting ready to make it.”
Rossum clarified that she did not leave Shameless to start a family, saying that assumption “could not be further from the truth.” Rossum and husband Sam Esmail share two children, born in 2021 and 2023.
The Golden Globe nominee, who has produced series like Three Women, explained, “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”. She admitted that leaving came with “grief and sorrow” because she would miss the cast and crew, but she was also excited to begin a new chapter.
However, Rossum admitted that she was shocked when her fight for equal pay with co-star William H. Macy became public. According to Yahoo Entertainment, during her final run on the series, Rossum was reportedly earning $350,000 per episode. She revealed that she believed Showtime may have leaked details of her pay negotiations, which she had hoped would remain private.
Created by Paul Abbott, the series featured an ensemble cast that included Jeremy Allen White, Cameron Monaghan, Shanola Hampton, Steve Howey, Ethan Cutkosky, Emma Kenney, and Joan Cusack, among others. The series ran for 11 seasons, premiering on January 9, 2011, and concluding on April 11, 2021. It holds the record as Showtime’s longest-running original scripted series, as per John Wells Productions.
TELL US – DID EMMY ROSSUM’S EXIT CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF SHAMELESS?
Originally reported by Meenakshi Sengupta on Reality Tea
