Emmy Rossum has revealed that her years-long equal pay battle on Shameless was only resolved because news of the dispute leaked to the public and even then, the turnaround was astonishing.
Speaking on Call Her Daddy with host Alex Cooper, Rossum described how a pay standstill that had dragged on for more than five years was settled within a single day once the story became public in late 2016.
“I was on a writer’s retreat and I was procrastinating and I opened up Twitter and it was a headline that we were in a stalemate and I was shook,” she said. “It’s a private business negotiation and I never imagined it would become public.” Within hours, the tide had turned.
“People seemed to write other articles, like immediately commenting on that, being quite surprised that I wasn’t already being paid equal. And it was resolved within a day. I was shocked and quite frankly, very, very surprised that we actually got it.”
Rossum played Fiona Gallagher, the fiercely capable eldest Gallagher sibling, across all 11 seasons of Showtime’s Shameless from 2011 to 2021. William H Macy was the marquee name when the show began and Rossum acknowledged that his higher salary “made a lot of sense” at the outset given her relative inexperience in television. But Fiona quickly became the show’s standout character and Rossum emerged as Macy’s clear co-lead, in many episodes, she had more screen time than his character Frank.
Her first attempt to renegotiate came ahead of season three, when her team felt the evidence of her contribution was strong enough to make the case. It was denied.
“We didn’t get it and that’s fine. We tried and we didn’t get it,” she said, adding with characteristic pragmatism: “It’s always scary asking for what you think you are worth. It’s their job to make the show for as little as possible to make the most profit. That’s any business.”
The request ahead of season eight was similarly “shut down pretty fast,” leaving the situation in a stalemate that Rossum wasn’t sure would ever be resolved.
Then the leak happened and everything changed.
Macy had publicly backed his co-star throughout. He told TMZ at the time that it was “about fucking time” she received equal pay, adding: “She works as hard as I do. She deserves everything.” At Vulture Fest in 2017 he was equally direct: “Who’s the center of the show? It’s Fiona. Of course she should get paid.” Rossum returned for seasons eight and nine before departing to focus on her own projects, including developing Peacock’s Angelyne and establishing a production company. She was clear that her exit had nothing to do with lingering resentment.
“I only desire to remain professional and my focus is never on money, it’s on what’s fair and what’s right,” she told Cooper. “It was really about being valued equally when I was doing equal work. For me, it was as simple as that. I was very, very happy when we got it and very, very happy for what it seemingly did for other women.”