Jeremy Allen White was on Shameless so long he started to feel like he wasn’t an actor anymore
White played Lip Gallagher for 11 seasons on the Showtime dramedy
Aux News Shameless
10 years on a television series is the kind of job security many actors dream of, but apparently it can also be a detriment to The Craft. This is according to Shameless star Jeremy Allen White, who says in a new GQ interview that being Lip Gallagher that long messed with his mind.
“I love Shameless so much. I love everybody that was a part of it, and the experience was incredible. But I’m not sure if shows are meant to go that long,” he says. “There was a period where I stopped feeling like an actor and I started feeling like I was just here to do this show. It was an upsetting head space to be in.”
While he viewed the series finale with relief, it also threw him for a loop: “When it was going to end, I was questioning: Maybe I do just exist on this show. What else is there? Am I an actor? I was definitely having a lot of doubt when I was finishing Shameless.”
It may come as a surprise, then, that White chose to sign on for another show about yet another guy with working-class Chicago roots, but he identified with The Bear’s main character and their mutual self-doubt. “I think that was something Carmy was really struggling with, too,” he explains. “We kind of found each other at a similar place. He knew he’s really gifted at this thing, but he could be painfully insecure about his abilities as well. I was feeling a little insecure at the end, too.”
He admits to being “too concerned with what other people might think” about the overlap between Shameless and The Bear, but says, “I also knew that if I said no to this, that whoever ended up doing it, I would hate them forever. So there was some spiteful stuff going on, too.” Given The Bear’s freshman success, he may be in for another long haul on this series, too.
27 Comments
He got to be in a nude scene with Sasha Alexander and get paid for it.No whining!
Damn I forgot all about that. But your argument is valid.
These kinds of comments are just so shallow and sad. And certainly not “valid” as another commenter put it. I’m so grateful that I make art and have a kid to care for so that “Me Like Pretty Girl Boobies” isn’t literally the top priority for me in life. It’s just so pathetic.
It was a joke. Maybe not a particularly funny one, but I am well aware that there is more to quality TV than attractive women getting naked on camera.
Guilty Remnant must be as joyless as The Leftovers
Please take a moment to kill your over-serious self. Please.
Fucking hell, it’s a shitty state of affairs when one as humourless as you is making more of you.
If men want to make those “jokes” then they should try being funny instead of the same old “heh boobs”.
Oh, for god’s fucking sake, it was a dumb joke.
Job security is great, but acting is a creative job, and if you’re not taking different roles, you’re creatively stifled. But if an actor leaves their most well-known recurring role, they’re putting their success at risk. Look what happened to Denise Crosby after she left Star Trek TNG. She didn’t want to spend her career stuck in the same role, so she quit in order to grow as an actor. But she never found success beyond TNG, and her most well-known role since was in a TNG fan movie lol. Sometimes actors can’t win.
No offense to Crosby, but the record shows that she bailed on TNG pretty quickly.
Obligatory:
At least it’s easier than it used to be.I think it used to be rare for a TV star to even break into movies.There’s a list of people who did, of course, but it wasn’t like now.
“Join me for my next Master Class at 12:30 in the Hyatt Atrium.”
-Gnarly Rae Jepsen
He’s a piece of shit troll who should’ve been left in the grays.
And spent her career publicly lamenting that she had done that. Not to take anything away from Pet Semetery.
I watched Shameless for awhile, but when it wasn’t being hilarious, it was just so fucking depressing that I just couldn’t anymore.
After watching it for a long time I just stopped. I got so tired of the Hey What Bad Decision Can We Make Now? storylines that the show and it’s characters stopped being interesting. I don’t even care how it ended, just that it did.
Yeah. It got a little like Gilligan’s Island.Every show, someone finds a way off the island, but you know from the start they’re going to sabotage it somehow and end up right back where they started.I still laugh at how much drugs Frank’s colon could hold though.
Yeah, watching the shit-broke but clever and resourceful Gallaghers hustle and scam their way into keeping a roof over their heads was a lot of fun. Watching them nearly dig themselves out of poverty only to make an immensely stupid decision that derails any progress over and over again decidedly wasn’t. Once I realized they’d endlessly repeat that last bit until the show ended was where I checked out.
Exactly this! Before they released the last season on Netflix, I did a rewatch (because I really do love Shameless!) but they really should have ended it at season 7. After then, it felt like the writers were doing whatever they could to keep the Gallaghers hustling and poor, even when they were finally making progress, so they had the characters do exactly what you said: make dumb decision after dumb decision to undo any bit of progress they may have had. It got annoying and fairly depressing pretty quick.
Is Between Shameless and The Bear some kind of porn parody?
Bring back Sheriff Blow-Ho!
He was my fav actor on Shameless (my gf forced me to watch first 3 seasons with her but I had to stop after yhat) and hes great in The Bear!
“There was a period where I stopped feeling like an actor and I started feeling like I was just here to do this show. It was an upsetting head space to be in.”Lip was sure as shit spinning his wheels those last two seasons or so. It probably started earlier, but man did it seem like his plot went absolutely nowhere.
He was so wasted on that show. The last 4, maybe 5 seasons (so half the show!), were poorly written even when the actor performances were strong. The standouts on that show were Emmy Rossum, Jeremy Allen White, and Cameron Monaghan. I hope all three get the types of roles that showcase their abilities. The Bear was great! I can’t wait for another season.
He was the best actor on the show. Once he became reliably sober though, his storyline just became boring. Much like real life.