Before the U.S. remake of Shameless, the comedic British soap about a family in extreme poverty making ends meet, Emmy Rossum was primarily known for playing the young ingénue in the film version of The Phantom Of The Opera, a part she won to some degree thanks to her own training in the opera. On Shameless, though, she’s been a revelation as Fiona, a surprisingly steely young woman who never gives herself the benefit of the doubt. Rossum took a part that seemed already well-defined by Anne-Marie Duff, the actress who originated the role in the British series, then found new depths and layers to it. Particularly on a series sold on the back of its male star, William H. Macy (as Fiona’s drunken father, Frank), the character of Fiona, and by extension the actress who plays her, has been all the more surprising to viewers. As the series evolved—it recently entered its third season, and airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern on Showtime—its writers kept giving Rossum more and more to play, and she handled every task perfectly, from comedy to drama to romance. Rossum sat down with The A.V. Club at the Television Critics Association winter press tour to talk about Fiona’s evolution, why the character seems so desperate this season, and the composition of the show’s onscreen fake poop explosion.
The A.V. Club: This season, your character and Jimmy are cohabiting, so you’re at the stage where you’re still in love, but you also drive each other nuts. What’s it like playing out that relationship with Justin Chatwin?
Emmy Rossum: Fun. Different. It’s exciting, because it’s the first show I’ve ever been on, to watch the characters develop, to watch the relationships develop. And it’s really mirroring real life. You know, you’re in crazy love, and you want to move in, and you move in, and then you’re like, “Oh, it’s you again.” It’s interesting. He’s not the sexy car thief he was at the beginning. He’s kind of turned into Mr. Mom. He’s vacuuming; he has spit-up on his shirt. It’s just a different Jimmy. And he’s in trouble a lot at the same time, that I don’t know about. So he’s still doing the deceitful lying thing that will eventually come to a head.
AVC: This season deals a lot more with Fiona having to negotiate the world of sexual politics, and she’s actually sexually harassed at one point. You work in an industry where a lot of negotiating of those gender roles is going on. How did that feel to you as an actor?
ER: I think that’s something that happens in every business, every industry. There are some people for whom it doesn’t matter how pretty you are, how thin you are, how young you are. If you have a pulse, they will want to sleep with you. So Fiona encounters one of these people who’s using his power at a supermarket over the checkout girls, and she’s really appalled. I think it’s really the first time she’s ever seen something like that to that extent. She’s always used it to her advantage, and now it seems she really wants to downplay it. I think that it’s a bit of a wake-up call. I think that episode—for me, it was really difficult to strike the right balance of tone, because I think they were really trying to play up the comedy, and for me, it was more of a serious issue, so I kept trying to steer away from the jokes about it, and just try to tell the honest story.
AVC: The show is both a comedy and a drama, and you are certainly a stable center for a lot of chaos going on around you.
ER: I think you just have to play the sane one in an insane asylum. But at the same time, in the first two episodes, Fiona makes some pretty drastic decisions that are out of character for her that are a little more Frank [William H. Macy]-like and puts the family money in jeopardy, and Lip [Jeremy Allen White] rises to the occasion. I think when you have a lot of kids in a family, there are power shifts and balances, and it’s interesting to tell that story.
AVC: This season, Fiona seems a little more desperate to elevate herself out of the situation she’s in. Where did you decide that was coming from?
ER: Just the amount of time, the fact that she’s gotten her GED and it’s put her no farther ahead than she thought. Getting the GED was such a big struggle, to study so much, she was so shocked that she could actually pass it. Being not somebody who has ever considered herself smart at all, she’s always been thrifty. I think that now having achieved this, she really thought it would give her a leg up, and it doesn't. I think that’s very disheartening, and puts her into a little bit of a panic about her future.