Emmy Rossum says playing Fiona Gallagher on Shameless came with an unexpected downside off-screen: men she dated sometimes assumed they already knew something about her sexuality because of the nudity she had done on the show.
Speaking with Maria Sharapova on the Pretty Tough podcast, Rossum said the show’s intimate scenes created “preconceived notions” that followed her into her personal life.
“It got quite tricky because of the nudity on the show,” Rossum said. “All of the guys that I would go out with had preconceived notions of who I was or how I was sexually.”
For Rossum, the disconnect was especially strange because she began Shameless when she was just 24, a period when she was still figuring out who she was both personally and professionally.
“You’re trying to figure out who you are,” she said. “You’re coming into your own as an artist. And there’s also all these preconceived notions about you that are out there that are associated with [you] because your body is your art, right? And people can get confused.”
ALSO READ:
Episode Recap: Dark Matter’ finally gives Daniela room to move
One dating experience in particular stuck with her.
Rossum recalled going out with a man who said he wanted to run for president someday and worried that being associated with her could become politically complicated because she had appeared nude on television.
“He was like, ‘I really want to be president someday,’” Rossum said. “And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a great goal.’”
She said he then asked whether dating someone who had “been exposed in the way that you have” could hurt him politically.
Rossum’s response was simple: “This is an insane conversation to have.”
The anecdote underscores a larger issue Rossum raised during the interview: audiences and potential partners can blur the line between an actor and the character they play, especially when a performance involves sex or nudity.
That problem was amplified by Shameless, where Rossum spent nine seasons as Fiona, the fiercely independent eldest Gallagher sibling navigating poverty, relationships and family chaos on Chicago’s South Side.
Before the Showtime series, Rossum had already built a substantial film résumé with Mystic River, The Day After Tomorrow, Poseidon, and The Phantom of the Opera, the latter earning her a Golden Globe nomination.
But Shameless made her a fixture of television and, as Rossum now reflects, also gave strangers a false sense of familiarity with parts of her life that were never really theirs to interpret.
For an actor, that may be the strangest side effect of being seen too clearly on screen: people start believing they know you when they only know the role.
