Emmy Rossum on making Furious and Surviving an FBI Boot Camp

0:00And it was just an insane day. Cows walking around the range, like trying to clear this house, trying to find this guy who was like hiding in this room and try to shoot him before he shot me. And by the way, this was all elective. No one was like, you got to go do this. You got to go do this training. I like sought out this person, was like, please train me. Put me in insane situations. Give me like a Quantico boot camp. I want to have the experience of what it would take to be this person. Like flew myself to Texas. Put me in, coach. Put me in. Put me in. I'm always like, put me in, coach.

0:33Most people think of acting as an art. In some ways, my guest today treats it like a sport. Emmy Rossum got her start in show business in the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus, where she learned that performance requires discipline. As a teenager, she broke into film and she held her own on projects with the legends like Sean Penn and Andrew Lloyd Webber. She spent most of her 20s starring in the hit TV series, Shameless, where she developed the confidence to advocate for equal pay. And now, in her 30s, she's taking her career into her own hands more than ever. She's starring in the new show, Furious, but this time, it's her own production company behind the smash hit.

1:15Today, we get into how she's built her career piece by piece and the dedication it's taking to evolve over the past 30 years. I'm Maria Sharapova, and this is Pretty Tough.

1:32Support for the show comes from Honest. As an athlete, I've always held myself to the highest of standards. And as a parent, same story. There's no room for compromise. Honest thinks the same way, with hypoallergenic, dermatologist-tested baby essentials designed to go above and beyond. Products like their clean conscious wipes or their bath and body essentials and diapers, all made for the delicate details that matter most. Your peace of mind starts with Honest, the mother of all standards. Shop Honest on Amazon, Walmart, and Target.

2:06Your favorite fall flavors are back at Starbucks. The one and only pumpkin spice latte and the deliciously smooth iced pecan crunch latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. Or find a new favorite, like the new iced banana bread latte that tastes just like fall in a cup. You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. I'm Ina Garten. I have a new podcast called Happy Hour with Ina. Each week, I'm inviting a really interesting guest to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with actors, chefs, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire.

2:51So grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. You can watch by searching for Happy Hour with Ina on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don't we all need to have more fun?

3:09I am so excited to speak to you. You have had such a phenomenal career starting from a very young age. I very much know what it's like to start one profession that you're so passionate and dedicated to from a very young age. And to continue to hone in on a skill set and a drive and go through so many challenges and ups and downs along the way. So I'm so excited to have this conversation. We start these segments with a quote. Uh-oh. And that's what many guests say. They're very scared. They're like, which one did you choose? But you said something earlier this year, practice saying what you need and what you want in every aspect of your life.

3:56When is the last time that you put that advice into practice? About 20 minutes ago when I ordered the ricotta with eggs, I mean like really about truly everything. I think it applies to every moment. Like there are moments, right, when you can't do what you want, when you have to prioritize the needs of others for your children or for your co-stars or whatever. But a lot of the times I think as women, we have gotten so used to yesing other people and listening to what others around us want. We even get used to not listening to our bodies. Right. Oh, I'm hungry. Oh, that's a bad thing. You know what I mean?

4:37We have to listen to ourselves inside because we know we know what we want and we know what we need. I think if we really if we really can hear it. I want to go back to your early 20s. Okay. You're on the set of Shameless. Many years later, you wrap. And this is a long span. Nine years. Nine years. Those are very transformative years for a young girl. Oh, yeah. In your industry, how did you develop? What are the skills that you developed along the way. Did you feel like you grew up faster because of that role? It made dating quite tricky because of the nudity on the show. Because I love that's where all of the guys that I would go out with had preconceived notions of who I was or how I was sexually.

5:34It was totally bizarre. are. It was like they couldn't separate. Like I met this guy on a plane and he was very cute and he took me out on a date and he was like, we were not meant to be together. But he said, he was like in real estate or something. He was like, I really want to be, I really want to be president someday. And I was like, wow, that's like a great goal. He's like, but I feel like running for office, dating someone, you know, who's been like exposed in the way that you have. Do you think that would be tricky for me? And I was like, this is an insane conversation to have. So I think growing up in your 20s, you're dating, you're trying to figure out who you are, you're coming into your own as an artist.

6:19And there's also all these preconceived notions about you that are out there that are associated with, because your body is your art, right? And people can get confused. And so that certainly came up for me in a more serious way. I mean, the show was I became a I became a learner. I became a watcher. And I had always been that way. I remember watching intensely Sean Penn when I worked with him on Mystic River. I would watch how people were leaders. I would watch how people stepped up. You were learning on the job. Completely. I was also learning production. I was learning physical production. I was learning the jobs of every single crew member in a way where I actually had the time to do that because when you're on a movie, you never get comfortable enough.

7:12But when you're there for nine years, it becomes all such a well-oiled machine. And I also got to direct on the show a couple times and direct for John on other shows that he had done. I really started to learn the business aspect of it and how the physical production happened, to listen after the table reads, to the notes that the studio executives were giving, to listen to how they were thinking about story. and at the same time I met the love of my life my husband Sam who was a young director I didn't know at first he would be become my husband but we're getting to that I know but I was also watching him at the same time get his career off and watching him put up a show and find very surprising exciting success and watching him navigate crafting story producing something attaching actors.

8:05Like I felt like I had a very special front row seat to how things were and how things were physically getting done, which demystified a lot of it for me and made me really hungry to excel at other aspects of this too. At the end point, when it's all said and done, when a movie has been, you know, going around every major city, it's been showcased and you you see the trophy and you see the result and you think like that is success. But behind all of that, there could be 10 or 15 years that led to that job is time is commitment is resilience is persistent and persistence in your craft. And I love I love when you talk about like just getting into the weeds of your industry.

8:54There are things that you perhaps may not apply, but because you know of them and you know how it works, it makes you a better actor. Yeah, it was an amazing, it was an amazing experience, both from learning the physical production side of things to just getting more comfortable. It seemed like the character that you played in Shameless grew with confidence. But I also sense that professionally and personally, you grew with confidence in those nine years. Yeah, as you do in your 20s. I mean, in your 20s, you're like, I think like at the apex of your youthful beauty, right? And like everything you think you want to like freeze the moment forever.

9:39Like you don't have a line on your face. You can stay up all night and still produce the next day. Yet you're still so confused about who you are in the world, how you're allowed to show up, what space you're allowed to take up, what ideas you can get people to believe in and fund. I certainly gained a lot of confidence during that time because I gained knowledge. And I think it's knowing more that made me realize, oh, so I actually have to know everything today or now. I just have to know what I don't know and be willing to say, hey, I want to learn that. And with that, you had you created a platform and a voice and a confidence to say in this moment of my career and the length of the show, I would like to receive equal pay with my co-star like that.

10:32That's ballsy. That's confidence that you didn't show up as a young 20 year old and said that. Was it like you woke up one morning and was like, I deserve this or did it take time to develop? Like I can feel that my chest gets tight just thinking about it even now because the idea of asking for your worth for women, I think it's hard. I think it gets easier the more examples that we have of it. But I certainly think that there's a part of me that's still scared to think I even did it. and that's ever after having, you know, won. So I think there is a stigma around that. I certainly started the show in a very different place than Macy was, so it made a lot of sense that we came into it as we did.

11:26I was number two on the call sheet. He was number one. He had had a lot more credits and time in the industry than I had. But as the course of the show started to move on, Our responsibilities felt much more even. Our responsibilities behind the camera felt even too. And we had two periods of contract renegotiations, which happen when they want to add time on the back end of the contract. They'll ask for more years and then give you a raise in the interim. And the first time that we went in and renegotiated, we had asked for equal pay and we didn't get it. And then the next time they came, I was like, OK, so now we really have to try to get it this time.

12:11And when you say we, it's you and your lawyer. Me, my lawyer, my agents, my. No one, no other co-stars. No, no. And so it but it does feel kind of isolating and scary to go into those conversations. And still, they're private. They're private conversations. Right. And then after a while of kind of like reaching a stalemate, you open Twitter one day and it's somehow public. And how do you feel? I mean, certainly terrified, surprised. And then the tide turned and it was resolved really, really quickly. It's a surprising thing to go through because you never expect that any of your kind of private financial business dealings will become public.

12:55It's anyone's business. Yeah. And you certainly also don't want that to affect the rest of the people that you're working with who don't know that those conversations are happening, who are having their own individual conversations about their own deals. Does it feel like women have any more leverage now? I think it's one drop in the bucket towards a positive shift. I ask you because when you talk about it, you say there's like you're still holding on to this feeling. Well, because we're all affected by the aftershocks of patriarchy, right? We've all internalized these biases of the way we're supposed to be, the way we're supposed to behave.

13:33We're never supposed to be cross. We're never supposed to be any other way other than the way that we're supposed to be. And that's just not realistic. It's not practical. And it's like oppressive for women, I think. So I think it's really important that we start, again, listening to those voices inside us that say, this is what feels right. I believe in this and I would like this. And now you're on another fantastic show, Furious. Watching your show after I put my son to bed and my husband comes in and he's like, you're watching a thriller at 9 p.m. I know. And I'm like, I know. I never do this.

14:14The only thing I'd watch after putting my son to bed is something like uplifting. Yeah, sure. Because I'm someone that then for the next 12 hours like really tunes into it. Like my body. You have osmosis. My body. You're permeable. Feels everything that you went through. It's amazing. In your episode. You'd probably be a really good actor. No. Okay. Empath? I'll stick to podcaster. Empath? Yes. Yeah. Maybe perhaps. Yeah. How did this show come about? Because it's brilliant. Thank you. It is dark. It's dark. It is dark. I do not recommend it after putting your kids to bed. Oh, I do. You do? I think it's cathartic in a way.

14:52Yeah. I think women have a lot to feel let down by society, a lot of rage. There is dark humor in the show. The show came about because I was looking for a role that would be as deep and juicy as the one that I had played on Shameless for so many years. And I had started this production company, right, a couple years before I left Shameless. The first show we made was called Angeline. It was on Peacock. It was a limited series about Angeline, the Billboard Queen. I was looking for really an ongoing series. I loved being on a show for so many years where I could kind of unpack and go deeper with the character.

15:30When the audience already has a couple hours with you, you don't have to do all that setup anymore. There's already the context that they understand and that connection they feel with the character. And so you can go so much deeper. So I started watching old movies to see if there might be some IP that would spark an idea. Because my production company didn't have a ton of funding, didn't have any funding behind it. So we weren't able to option or get all these top 10 summer read, hot, chick lit flick. And that wasn't really totally my sensibility either. My sensibility has always been a little off-center, super entertaining, but really like kind of I like a Trojan horse.

16:18It's dynamic. I like to be dynamic and I like it to be about something. Like Angeline was like about this billboard queen, but then at the end it was about how her parents had survived the Holocaust. And it was about trauma and it was about trauma responses. And I'm very interested in women's experience in contemporary society about fame addiction, about beauty addiction. So I watched this movie, Black Widow, the starred Deborah Winger and Teresa Russell. And it was about the easiest elevator pitch is sometimes the best pitch because it's really easy to explain. And you can explain it in 10 seconds.

16:58It's about a female FBI agent who is hunting a female serial killer. Period. I'm in. I'm sat with my popcorn. You're out of the elevator. Yeah, I want to see it. And of course, there's a great twist ending. And I'm thinking, OK, this is it. Here it is. And so I went and I took the idea to Hulu. They really liked the idea. It was in the Searchlight Disney catalog. It was a title that they already owned and that they hadn't been looking at. And they had just worked with Liz Merriweather on the dropout. And they asked if I like Liz. And of course, I love Liz's work. She watched the movie and liked the idea.

17:32and then she signed on. And here it is. Yeah, I mean, years and years and years later, we had, you know, a big actors and writers strike in there and things take a long time to come to fruition. And yeah. And this wasn't the first time that you starred and executive produced in. Mm-hmm. What is that experience like of having both of those responsibilities? So fun. Within one project? It's so fun. it's so fun because I still can't believe that like I can have an idea like oh wouldn't it be cool if I could do x then a lot of work goes into it then I put forth the idea and people write a check to make that then you're on a set with like-minded people that you You get to help hire and give jobs to.

18:27You get to make this thing and then you get to share it with people. It's so cool. It's so fun and it's so energizing and it's so gratifying. Does it feel like you have to wear two different hats? Totally. Yeah. How do you separate the two? Well, it's important to separate them for yourself and also to separate them for your co-workers. Because I think oftentimes you can't do everything all the time. It's a little bit like shifting in and out of mom and work mode. You just can't. You can't do everything all the time. Producing is what you do until you start shooting. And the training for the acting is what you're doing alongside that.

19:14I mean, the whole time that we were developing the scripts, I was also physical training, talking to detectives, talking to FBI agents, telling them that I was going to make this show that I didn't have a green light on. Asking them to train me, to weapons train me, to physical train me, to explain to me how to interrogate people, taking all that information, bringing it back and talking about the scripts through that lens. The whole time you're kind of like you're just producing and then you're casting, you're location scouting and you're hiring and you're setting everything up and then you get to walk on set and then you have to stop producing because your job is to show up fully as an actor.

19:52And so I don't produce until the lunch break. At lunch, I'll go back to producing and I'll talk to people will tell me all the things that are going wrong with the budget or whatever. And you're able to separate the two just like that? Because I'm not doing that during that hour. And then I'm able to go back to the acting. And then at night I'll watch dailies or look at what. I mean, yeah, but when you're so embedded in it and you're so obsessed with it. Yeah. You love it. And I think it's also really important for your co-stars that they don't feel like you're a producer. It's not awkward. You're not producing their performance at that moment.

20:28You're just their co-star. That's not my job in that moment. My job is to be in scene with them as an actor. Do you think of your production company as it was a natural evolution to your craft? Oh, it was pretty discouraged by some people around me that thought I should just stay an actor at that time. Stick to one lane? Yeah. It takes a lot of work, right? You could make a lot more money for people around you by just taking acting job after acting job after acting job because it takes a long time to put something together and produce it. And you can maybe make one thing a year, one thing every two years if you're lucky, right?

21:09Versus just like taking the jobs in the incoming call business, you could do five jobs a year. How do you handle those conversations when someone, you know, looks you in the eye and says, I don't think this is something that you should be doing. Like stick to your role, stick to acting. I listen to my gut. And then if they're helpful to me in the short term, I keep them around. And if they're not, I don't. So it's that simple. Yeah, it's totally simple. Like if you don't want to come on the ride that I'm on, somebody is going to want to sit in that jump seat with me. But there's also like my manager has been in my life since I'm 13 years old.

21:46He's always sat in that jump seat with me. He's my brother. So I think he was 26 at the time. So we grew up like babies together. I started working with my manager when I was 11 years old. He came out of still. Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. He came out of Purdue, was like an assistant, and he started his job as getting visas for my father and I to travel to international tournaments. That's your ride or die. Yeah. But not everyone has the confidence to stand up for what they know. You can feel it. You can have an opinion. Most of the time we know what's best for ourselves, but we are so influenced by the outside world, by our bosses, by leadership that in many moments we crumble to their advice.

22:41Yeah. And like to that person who thought that I shouldn't do my company and shouldn't, you know, make things myself, they're not wrong that I could have made more upfront money a different way. I could have. But my goals and their goals were different. My goal has never been the dollar. My goal has always been I care about making something. I care about telling a story. I care about going out there and sharing something with people. And, I mean, what's so special about what we do is it's about connection. It's about storytelling. It's about, like, seeing something and being like, I see my whole self reflected.

23:21And preparing for Furious. Yes. You did weapon training. Yes. You put on 10 pounds of muscle. Yes, I'm ready to do it again. I got to get it back. You consulted with female detectives. Yes. Who revealed, in your words, femininity gets left at the door in those jobs. Yeah. It feels like a tougher role for you. Yeah, I mean, the character has a lot of trauma, a lot of secrets that get revealed throughout the season. it showed me kind of like what you were saying how permeable i was emotionally because the first time that i went to go do training in west texas the first day was just weapons training and then the second day was situational training i did not expect that there would be a guy who was ex-military on the course there to kind of sneak attack me with a gun that had yeah unknowingly that had simunitions in it.

24:18So they're like bullets, but they're paint inside. But they still hurt when you get shot. And it was just an insane day in the driving rain with like cows walking around the range, like trying to clear this house, trying to find this guy who was like hiding in this room and try to shoot him before he shot me. And by the way, this was all elective. No one was like, you got to go do this. You got to go do this training. I like sought out this person, was like, please train me. Put me in insane situations. Give me like a Quantico boot camp. I want to have the experience of what it would take to be this person.

24:51Like flew myself to Texas. Put me in, coach. Put me in. Put me in. I'm always like, put me in, coach. And I realized how soft I am. I realized how. You do not strike me as soft. No, but like the second you get me in the driving rain with like a man with a gun shooting at you, It's a very visceral thing that I'm like, I'm going to need a few more days to like really, you know. Lean into this. Really lean into this. This is crazy. But it really did show me how separated from your emotional self you have to be in order to do this job. And I think that was a real key for the character. What is it like to hear that something that you've poured so much passion and work and effort into gets renewed for a second season?

25:38I mean, really exciting. also because we had always intended this to be an ongoing series but Liz was joking like well if it's not a success we'll just say it was meant to be a limited but it's really exciting it's exciting to be like I'm going to be back with that crew again I get to keep telling this story I think we where we ended the season there's a lot more secrets and questions than even where we started so I just can't wait to get back in there get back in the gym get back to my 175 grams of protein a day. Like, let's go. I'm ready to go. Get those 10 pounds of muscle in. Get it. Love it.

26:15I'm ready.

26:23Support for the show comes from Honest. When you're a professional athlete, you hold yourself to the highest of standards. You have to have a certain mindset that lets you train with precision and stay committed. When we become parents, we keep those same principles. and that means we stick to brands who also hold themselves to a high standard, like Honest. Honest makes hypoallergenic and dermatologist-tested baby essentials that will give you peace of mind through everyday messes, cuddles, bath time, and cleanups. They hold every product to their highest standards. They even call it the Honest Standard.

26:55That means they thoughtfully choose the ingredients to put in and the ones to leave out. From Honest clean-conscious wipes to bath and body essentials and diapers, everything Honest makes is designed for the delicate details that matter most. Because when caring for your baby comes with so many little decisions, you need products you can trust to take care of that soft baby skin as safely and gently as you can. Honest, the mother of all standards. Shop Honest on Amazon, Walmart, and Target.