Emmy Rossum felt “shook” when her pay equality dispute over Shameless was made public.
During an interview for the Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday, host Alex Cooper asked the actress, who played Fiona Gallagher on the Showtime series, about her battle for equal pay.
In response, Emmy recounted how her agent first argued that she should be paid the same as William H. Macy, who portrayed patriarch Frank Gallagher, back in 2013 – but her request was denied.
“(Macy) was coming in much older, much more accomplished, tonnes more credits, and number one on the call sheet. And then by season three, they approached us – we had a six-year contract – approached us to add another year,” she remembered. “And I think my lawyers felt at that time that we had the receipts. We could see the way the story lines were shaping. We knew about fan engagement, and we felt that it made sense to ask for that. We didn’t get it. And that’s fine. We thought, ‘We tried. We didn’t get it.'”
However, Emmy and her team revisited negotiations with the studio in late 2016, arguing that the Mystic River star should earn more money because she had also been directing episodes of the programme.
“I was one day sitting, 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,” the 39-year-old continued. “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 crew. Everyone was doing their own negotiation. So, I certainly didn’t want that.”
Emmy “didn’t say anything” to her co-stars about her contract, but once the talks went public, she felt that the “tide really shifted” in her favour.
“People seemed to write other articles, 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,” she recalled.
To conclude, Emmy emphasised that she wasn’t driven by money but by a “desire to remain professional”.
“It’s on what’s fair and what’s right, and I believe that people should be paid for their labour,” the mother-of-two added. “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.”
Emmy left Shameless after season nine. The show ultimately ran for another two seasons, with the series finale airing in April 2021.
She is currently promoting her new crime drama, Furious. The show is set to premiere via Hulu on 27 July.
