Shameless’ Emmy Rossum Addresses Her Exit From Series

Emmy Rossum is correcting a feeling Shameless fans once seemed so sure of. 

Seven years after she left the beloved Showtime series, the 39-year-old—who played eldest sibling Fiona Gallagher—clarified why she exited two years before the show officially came to an end in 2021. 

“A common misconception is that I left to go have babies,” Rossum shared during a July 8 appearance on Call Her Daddy. “That could not be further from the truth.”

Indeed, the Phantom of the Opera actress—who shares two young kids with husband Sam Esmail—noted that when she show’s producers came to her to extend her contract into an 11-season run, she felt it was time for her to pursue new ventures. 

“I had already set up my production company,” she recalled. “I had set up my first show and I was greenlit, getting ready to make it.”

But just because she left the series—which also starred Jeremy Allen White, William H. Macy, Emma Kenney and more in its ensemble—early, she wasn’t as far to the end of her rope as Fiona seemed to be.