‘Shameless’: Shanola Hampton Reveals Fate of Emmy Rossum’s Character

What’s going to happen to Fiona Gallagher? After Shameless actress Emmy Rossum announced her departure from the show following its current ninth season, many fans are left wondering about the fate of the Gallagher family matriarch.

Rossum’s co-star Shanola Hampton, who plays Veronica Fisher, aka V, hinted pretty heavily to The Hollywood Reporter that the future will always be open to Fiona on the show, even going so far to say that “she’s not going to die.”

“She’s brought to life Fiona in only Emmy Rossum can but ‘the show must go on’ as they say in Hollywood and she’s not moving far away. She’s just down the block so when we do reach our conclusion I’m sure that she’ll be like ‘hey guys, FiFi’s back!’” Hampton said. “They’re not going to kill her. I mean, spoiler alert, she’s not going to die. I don’t know if I can say that. She’s not dying.”

Like many of her other co-stars, Hampton expressed a bittersweet reaction over Rossum’s exit. “I think it’ll go forward and we’ll just start digging into the lives of the other characters. Will she be missed? Absolutely,” she said.

As far as what season 9, which premiered on Showtime Sunday night, will cover, the 41-year-old said that the show will get take on issues that are prevalent in present-day politics.

“We’re touching on MeToo,” Hampton said. “There’s going to be some campaigning that Frank is going to do. There’s going to be some touch about politics. We are living in present day, dealing with present-day issues so its thought-provoking and it’s funny and it makes you do ‘what the heck’ and it’s all the comments that you make in your regular like but we’re doing it in the way that only Shameless can do it.”

As for what the Gallagher household will look like, Hampton said each character gets to evolve this season.

“You’re getting to see Debbie do her thing and really become a matriarch in the house. You’ll get to see that transformation. You’ll have Ian when it picks up from him dealing with being gay Jesus and blowing up stuff. And then Carl is trying to get rid of a crazy girl,” she said.

Not only is Shameless entering its ninth season, which makes it the longest running Showtime series, it’s also hitting its 100th episode landmark this season.

“I can’t believe we’ve done 100 episodes. That’s the big tone of the season is that we’ve done more than a hundred episodes. We celebrate our 100th episode in episode four of this season. So this is a big time,” Hampton remarked.

While season 10 hasn’t yet been officially ordered, Hampton said she and the rest of the cast remains optimistic, adding that “all signs point to yes.”

“We are all excited about going back and being on this journey,” she said. “Who gets the opportunity to live out a character and grow with it for nine-plus seasons? It’s a dream. It maybe comes once in a lifetime. To be able to be on this journey with these people for this long, I don’t take it for granted. I just feel so excited that I’m still apart of this.”