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Rhymes with Possum...and With Awesome (Rossum)
The star of Shameless gives us a tour of her home, important advice for any relationship, and an unexpected introduction to her dog’s undercarriage
Published in the January 2014 issue
Emmy Rossum knows how to be. That’s how the twenty-seven-year-old puts it: “I just always knew how to be.” Meaning: She knows how to talk to people in a way that’s easy. She knows how to joke around and tell a good story and get serious when she wants to be serious, sweet when she wants to be sweet, a little raunchy when she wants to crack herself up. Knows how to be comfortable.
She was all of seven when they pulled her mother aside and told her her daughter could sing. Little Emmy was soon performing with the New York Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus. Sang with Pavarotti. Then she started acting, and directors loved how her eyes danced when she smiled, the way she could make dialogue sound like a song. At eighteen, she starred in the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera. She recorded albums. And then she got a big show: Shameless, the raucous Showtime dramedy now entering its fourth season, on which she plays the de facto matriarch of a poor Chicago family, the oldest of six kids with no mom and a drunk dad. It’s a household of misfits, but they get by, enduring poverty and bad luck, supporting one another, having sex with half the neighborhood. Surviving—because Fiona, Rossum’s character, is their leader. And you believe that Fiona can actually lead, because she is played by Rossum, and Rossum knows how to be. We talk via Skype, because she also knows how to use the Internet.
Emmy Rossum: Hi, what’s up?
[Her face fills the screen—her skin white and smooth like good china, coffee-colored hair over her shoulders, bouncy and shampooed. Her eyes: huge and alive. Ready.]
Esquire: It’s working.
ER [clapping]: We are tech geniuses. We can work Skype.
ESQ: Is that your home?
ER: Yeah, this is my little office, where I have my whiteboard where I write out what’s happening in the episodes, and... [points to couch] that’s where I procrastinate.
ESQ: I’m in a conference room. That’s a wall. That’s the other wall. [Points webcam out window at skyline.] That’s Manhattan.
ER [longingly]: Oh, yeah. I used to live there. It’s so pretty and gray and cold and moody. [Wistfully] Why can’t I be there?
ESQ: We just moved out of the city. We have a barn.
ER: Awww, God. That’s my dream. To be old enough and mature enough that I won’t be considered an “old lady” if I have a house with a barn. Because I already do needlepoint.
ESQ: Do you have cats, too?
ER: I have one—but I have a dog as well, and I’m not a vegan or anything. But I needlepoint and I have a cat, so it’s not boding well.
ESQ: The fabulous life of Emmy Rossum.
ER: Don’t forget my craft parties on Sundays. [She lets loose a deep, slightly hoarse belly laugh. A Rossum trademark.]
ESQ: Noted. What could we do on Skype that we couldn’t do either in person or on the phone?
ER: You could meet my dog? [Gets up.] Hold, please. [She goes into other room. Hysterical, echoy laughter.] He’s on his Furcedes! Look! [She holds up a giant dog bed.] So that’s Cinnamon. He’s real small.
ESQ: Let me get a picture.
ER: He has a really big penis.
ESQ: I should get a picture of that, too.
ER: No, that’s animal porn. But he has a huge penis.
ESQ: Cinnamon?
ER: He was a present. [Out of the side ofher mouth, as if not wanting Cinnamon to hear] I wanted a Rhodesian ridgeback. But I had a really shitty boyfriend who gave him to me. [Normal voice] And, of course, when a really cute dog shows up on your doorstep, you can’t be like, Yeah, no. You’re like, Oh, yay, puppy! Also: Never get your girlfriend a pet that she didn’t know she was getting.
ESQ: Where’s the cat?
ER: Oh, I don’t know. She’s huge. Let me go find her. [Flatly] Hey, kitty. [Returns with a large cat.] I found her in Chicago. She was a stray, and she set up shop in my trailer. She was mean. I mean really mean. So this is Fiona G. Kitty. The ghetto kitty. I took her to a vet and they said she was probably dying of breast cancer. [Stroking cat, in a loving voice] Cancer Kitty. I hate cats. But this cancer cat made me feel bad, so I was like, Okay, I’ll take her back to L. A. and give her her last six months of pain-free life.
So I took her to the vet in L. A. and he was like, This is a beautiful cat. And I said, Yeah, but too bad about the cancer. And he said, What cancer? And I’m like, You know, the lump on her stomach. And he’s like, You mean the hernia? I can take that out when I neuter her. She’s gonna live twenty-five years! And I was like, You fucking cat with your lying cancer sob story.
ESQ: Was that a person who just walked by?
ER: Yeah, that’s the housekeeper. [Louder now, excited] I should put you on Skype on my phone and walk you around my house.
ESQ: You’re frozen. Now you’re back, but you’re pixelated.
ER: Can you imagine people who are in long-distance relationships who have to do this?
ESQ: Horrible.
ER: A friend of mine is in a long-distance relationship. They have dates on Skype. They’ll both watch the same movie and...play.
ESQ: Do they do Skype sex?
ER: I assume sex is involved. I don’t know exactly where they stick it in. Do you watch My Strange Addiction?
ESQ: No.
ER: The weirdos that are on there are so fascinating. My favorite episode is where the guy has a relationship with his car. An intimate and sexual and emotional relationship with his car.
I’m gonna click off you for a second, accept this other call. [Beep beep beep. She reappears.] We’re mobile! We’re about to walk through my house. That’s my bedroom. Here’s my guest room. Here’s a picture of Audrey [Hepburn] that I love.
ESQ: You played her once.
ER: That’s not why I have her picture, though. I think she’s supercool. [Walking.] This is the room that everyone always hangs out in. This is the craft area. And that’s the kitchen. And this is my outside. I have a fire pit. And a garden. Thank you, Showtime!
ESQ: It’s beautiful. It’s an oasis.
ER: A little oasis of craftiness. Yeah,- so. That’s my little life. Better than meeting in a café?
ESQ: Way better. Anyway, things seem pretty good for you.
ER: They don’t suck! It’s amazing how things can be put into perspective for you so easily. Last weekend, I was pulling out of my house, and I saw a body in the road and blood everywhere. This guy had been hit by a car. I called 911 and stayed with him. You see how lucky you are to just be alive. All the Hollywood bullshit and accolades and money really doesn’t matter. It just gives you a slightly nicer house and slightly nicer food and slightly shinier hair.
How long is this article, by the way? Is this, like, a thing?
ESQ: Yeah, it’s a thing. What should I write? Just give me a first line.
ER: Okay, “Emmy is totes geek chic. Instead of a normal in-person interview, the Internet-savvy actress/singer invites me into her home virtually, on Skype. Now, I’ve never done this before”—now I’m writing as you.
ESQ: Keep going.
ER: “...but she seems very persuasive. One thinks that this Virgo is the kind of girl who gets what she wants.”
ESQ: Perfect. Can you just do a quick headstand before we go? Really quick?
ER [trying]: I can’t quite get up. I could when I was a kid, but I’m an old lady with cats now.
ESQ: Well, A for effort.
ER: “A” for “E”ffort! [She does an “A” and “E” dance.] I went to school on the Internet. I was not a cheerleader.
ESQ: We are breaking journalistic ground here.
ER: I don’t know if we are.
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