Shameless' Emmy Rossum Pranked Justin Chatwin With A Callback To His Weeds Days
Emmy Rossum and Justin Chatwin starred as tumultuous love interests Fiona and Jimmy (aka Steve) for the first several seasons of the Showtime series "Shameless." Their relationship was far from perfect — after all, Jimmy lied to Fiona about his real identity at first and his criminal behavior proved troubling to her — but there's no denying that the two had palpable chemistry. Plus the characters definitely had their moments of fun together, which Fiona needed, since she spent so much time and energy looking after her dysfunctional family.
Well, as it turns out, Rossum and Chatwin had fun with each off screen as well — in the form of pranks. In fact, Rossum once pranked Chatwin in a way that called back to the character he played on another drama series, "Weeds," a gay man named John Wilson.
Rossum revealed the prank during an interview with Vulture in 2013, the year the show's third season premiered, explaining that she had fake scripts made with a scene in which Jimmy comes out as gay to his father. Chatwin fell for it right away and started stressing out about how to play the scene, since the plot point seemingly came out of nowhere. Rossum and the rest of the crew, naturally, got a kick out of it.
Rossum says the prank was payback for one that Chatwin did
Emmy Rossum was proud of the prank she pulled on co-star Justin Chatwin, but made it clear that she was getting back at him for one that he had pulled on a crew member. Rossum explained, "Justin had pulled a prank on one of our location adviser on a Chicago shoot day. He pretended that he didn't get the call sheet and he wasn't working that day. He said that he had taken the day to go out of state on a road trip with his local buddies instead. So our poor location adviser freaks out and calls the producer, sobbing and crying. So I said, 'Let's get him back for making that poor girl cry.'"
Rossum got the writers to come up with fake pages of a script to make Chatwin think that his character was coming out as gay. She got the director, the producer, and the crew involved, and they even put the scene into the official schedule to really seal the deal. Rossum continued, "When he got the pages under his door, he called everyone, frantic: 'How am I going to play this scene?' ... For 12 hours, he was asking everyone, 'How should I deliver this line?' He had finally really embraced the whole idea of his character being gay!"
The fun of the prank didn't end there, though — they filmed Chatwin's reaction when they told him that the whole thing was an elaborate joke. Rossum said, "It was amazing. The shock on his face."