Shameless: When & Why Did Emmy Rossum's Fiona Gallagher Leave?

For most viewers, the surest sign that a show's going downhill is when the main character is suddenly written off. Nobody thinks the golden era of "The Office" includes those two seasons where Michael Scott was off in Colorado, just as nobody's favorite season of "That '70s Show" is the one where Eric's off in Africa while Seth Meyers' brother swoops in to date Donna in his place. Even when a show manages to replace its lead in a surprisingly effective, fan-pleasing away — see "Community" season 5 — there's still that pervasive feeling that the show's on borrowed time and its writers are delaying the inevitable by trying to keep the party going. 

In 2019, "Shameless" became another in a long list of TV shows to have its main character leave prematurely. Emmy Rossum's Fiona Gallagher, the oldest sister in the family and the one who served as the other Gallaghers' stand-in mom throughout most of their childhood, suddenly left not just the family but the city of Chicago entirely, never to be seen (and rarely to be mentioned) ever again. So ... what exactly happened there?

When "Shameless" began, Fiona was very much the mom of the group. But as the show went on, her siblings grew older and more self-reliant, and Fiona's role as the unofficial mom took up less of her time. In season 4, Fiona's role as the family's most stable figure dropped significantly, as this was the dark season where she went through a devastating self-destructive spiral that landed her shortly in prison. I loved season 4 — it's the best season of "Shameless" — but man was it hard to watch. Luckily, Fiona recovered from this tragic period of her life by season 5, and by season 8 she seemed to be doing better than ever.

But season 9 has Fiona hit rock bottom yet again. Her real estate investments fall apart, her boyfriend turns out to be married, and she begins spiraling into alcoholism further than we'd ever seen her do before. Although she does eventually get her s*** together by the end of season 9, the whole process is pretty depressing. At least in season 4 she had the comfort of thinking this rough period was a one-time thing, something she could learn from and move past; here, the fact that she's right back where she started five years ago makes her whole future feel hopeless. By the end of season 9, Fiona's gone sober and regained $100k of that money she lost, but how can she know she's not gonna hit rock bottom again a few years later? If she wants to avoid going down the same path as her father Frank (William H. Macy), she'll have to make some sort of major change — something Frank himself never dared to do.

So, Fiona leaves. She leaves her family half of her $100k and she uses the other half to start a new life. We don't know where she goes exactly, just that it's far away and hopefully nice and warm. On a meta level, this is the best decision Fiona's ever made; the show's very nature requires its characters to make terrible, self-destructive decisions at least once every few seasons, just to keep them from ever reaching that coveted middle-class status. By leaving "Shameless," Fiona is finally free from the meddling grasp of the show's writers. If she hadn't left, her next love interest might've been a surprise serial killer, or her next business adventure would've been buying a movie theater right before the pandemic hit. The only way to win "Shameless" is to leave it and never come back, and that's exactly what Fiona did.

When it comes to figuring out why Emmy Rossum left the show, it's tempting not to read between the lines of what some of the "Shameless" actors and crew members have said in the years since. There are rumors that Rossum was difficult to work with behind the scenes, which was given more validity when Emma Kenney, who played Debbie on the series, alluded to them in a 2021 interview on the podcast "Call Her Daddy" (via Deadline). "I remember pre-her leaving," Kenney recalled, "I'd go to set some days and I'd be very anxious about having a scene with her because if she had a bad day, she made it a bad day for everybody."

The official reason for Rossum's departure is simply that she wanted to work on other projects, not because of any tensions with the cast. "I can say for certain that this cast and crew, who I've been have truly honored to work alongside, are world class," she wrote in a Facebook post at the time. "I am proud and I'm filled with gratitude."

The other potential factor in Rossum's departure was her pay dispute with Showtime in 2016. As Variety reported at the time, "Rossum is demanding equal pay with [William H.] Macy, after seven seasons of being paid less than him, according to a report published earlier today by The Hollywood Reporter. A source tells Variety she has in fact been offered equal pay. But she is holding out for a bigger salary than Macy to make up for the previous seasons where she was making significantly less than him."

I think Rossum had a good case to make. Although Macy was the biggest name attached to the show, by 2016 it had long been clear that Rossum, Jeremy Allen White, and Cameron Monaghan were all doing way more work than him with a lot more interesting material. Fiona, in particular, was both the heart of "Shameless" and the clear main character; of course Rossum should be the highest paid. Showtime ended up agreeing to Rossum's terms fairly quickly, and although some fans often speculate that the dispute factored into Rossum's decision to leave, her own comments on the situation imply nothing of the sort.

"The bottom line of it was for me, I had to make a very unemotional, very business decision," she told the Daily Beast after it happened. "It's their responsibility to make the most profit, which means getting the talent that's best for the role at the cheapest rate possible. Everyone likes to get something on sale. And it's our responsibility to get as much as we can, and that's our agents' and lawyers' responsibility. It is, at the end of the day, business."

Thematically speaking, the biggest obstacle to Fiona's departure was the question of how to avoid it feeling like Fiona was abandoning her siblings. Yes, Fiona's role as the mom of her family had lessened a lot over the seasons, but she was still at least still her sibling Liam's (Christian Isaiah) legal guardian. More concerning was that Fiona had spent a big chunk of season 9 acting like Frank, and now she was leaving suddenly just like her mother Monica (Chloe Webb) did. How could "Shameless" make Fiona's departure feel like a positive change rather than a tragic repeating of her parents' mistakes?

"Shameless" averted this feeling by cheating a little. In the season 9 finale, all of her siblings are cooler and more put together than normal; even constant trainwreck Debbie seems to have her s*** together, something that was never the case with her before or after this. Meanwhile, Lip (White) doesn't seem to have any concerns about his recovering-alcoholic sister leaving to a place where she has no emotional support system, nor does Veronica (Shanola Hampton) seem concerned about her best friend leaving her life forever. As for Liam? Well, Fiona and Liam never actually talk about the fact that his legal guardian is leaving him for good. Not on screen at least.

There's a lot about the Gallaghers' reactions to Fiona's decision that ring false, but I did like how Monaghan's Ian (who's in prison at this point for very silly reasons) encourages Fiona to leave. Ian and Fiona have always had a surprisingly chill relationship, minus the events of "Occupy Fiona" of course, so it felt fitting for Ian to be the one she goes to for encouragement. Then again, is Ian the best person to listen to, considering how poorly his own attempt to flee Chicago went in season 4? Probably not, but he's still the Gallagher most likely to understand her decision.

Unfortunately, the final two seasons of "Shameless" were its worst. As frustrating as some of Fiona's storylines may have been over the years, she was the character who tied everything together and prevented the show from ever feeling too aimless. With Fiona gone, the series had to put even more focus on Debbie and her sibling Carl (Ethan Cutkosky), both of whom were never quite compelling enough to handle so much screentime.

Even the characters who were leading man material, like Ian and Lip, were given some disappointing storylines in their final seasons. Ian and his love interest Mickey's (Noel Fisher) relationship was a hollow shell of what it was in their early-season heyday, and everything involving Lip was just sort of depressing. It makes sense that the show would keep the characters poor to stay true to its roots, but at a certain point it gets too depressing to see them all make mistake after mistake, rarely learning from any of them.

While fans hoped that "Shameless" would avoid the trajectory of shows like "The X-Files," which fell apart the moment the main character left the series, "Shameless" had no such luck. Seasons 10 and 11 weren't immune from the constant, pervading sense that the good old days were over and the series had lost its spark.

Although fans of "The Office" and "That '70s Show" were disappointed that their leading man left the show early, they at least got the consolation prize of seeing Michael Scott and Eric Foreman return in the finale for one last hurrah. "Shameless" offered no such comfort. Fiona never showed up, nor was she mentioned by any character directly. The only reference to her existing was a few brief glimpses of Frank's memories as he's on his death bed.

It was a frustrating decision made worse by how little those final two seasons mentioned Fiona at all. This only helped the rumors of behind-the-scenes tensions with Rossum gained more traction, and it felt like an insult to fans who considered Fiona their favorite character. This woman basically raised most of these other Gallaghers, and now Frank doesn't even mention her in his goodbye note? For shame!

The actual reason for Fiona's absence in the finale is that the season was filmed under strict COVID-era guidelines. "We were trying to get Emmy — and Emmy wanted to come back," showrunner John Wells told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. "We caught it at the wrong moment. We wanted her to return and had some storylines about her coming back and she wanted to do it. It was impossible to figure out how to get her back. That was the biggest disappointment: not being able to make that work out because we all wanted it to happen. A very minor but sad result of everything that's happened in the pandemic."