Emmy Rossum’s Equal Pay Fight on Shameless Dragged on for Years in Private. The Public Leak Ended It in 24 Hours

Emmy Rossum played Fiona Gallagher on Shameless for 9 seasons, the oldest sibling holding a broke South Side Chicago family together and the emotional anchor of the show. Her fight to be paid what she thought that role was worth took years — and ended the moment it became public.

She first asked for a raise around Season 3 and got turned down. Before Season 8, she asked to be paid the same as William H. Macy, the show’s biggest name, and was “shut down pretty fast.” “It’s always scary asking for what you think you are worth,” she said on Call Her Daddy this week. Then the private talks leaked. She was on a writer’s retreat when she opened Twitter and saw a headline saying the two sides were in a “stalemate.”

It was resolved within a day. “I was shocked, and quite frankly, very surprised that we actually got it,” she said. What she’d wanted was to be “valued equally when I was doing equal work. For me, it was as simple as that.”

Side by side on the red carpet, the two Shameless leads posed at Showtime’s seasonal celebration at Cecconi’s Restaurant in Los Angeles on January 5, 2015. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images.

It settled almost immediately. She announced her Season 8 return around December 14, 2016, and ultimately got equal pay, reported at roughly $350,000 an episode.

William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum together at a Shameless screening and panel discussion held at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood in June 2013. Photo by Mark Davis / Getty Images.

Mid-answer and gesturing with one hand, the actress speaks as her co-star listens at the Shameless panel during the 2017 Vulture Festival in New York City. Photo by Bryan Bedder / Getty Images for Vulture Festival.

Macy backed her the whole way. Asked about it at the time, he told TMZ it was “about f—ing time,” that Rossum “works as hard as I do,” and that Fiona was the center of the series. The two appeared together at Vulture Fest the next year with no lingering tension, and she stayed on through Season 9.

Sharing a laugh, the co-stars sit side by side during the Shameless panel at the 2017 Vulture Festival at Milk Studios in New York City on May 21, 2017. Photo by Bryan Bedder / Getty Images for Vulture Festival.

“My focus is never on money, it’s on what’s fair and what’s right,” she said. The fight she’d waged quietly for years ended the day it stopped being quiet.

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