Obsession isn’t necessarily a bad quality, actress Emmy Rossum says.
“In order to do anything really well, you have to be a little obsessed,” she explains.
Rossum came to the realization while prepping for “Furious,” a Hulu series about an FBI agent searching for a female serial killer. While investigating, the agent finds common ground with the killer. Could she go to those extremes, too?
Emmy Rossum stars in "Furious."
“And that’s what I found most palpable in the time that we got to spend with former and current FBI and law enforcement," Rossum says. "They are very passionate about their job … and it doesn’t feel like a job to them. It feels like a big part of their identity.
“If you’re playing the good guy or the bad guy, your job is to approach everything with empathy. And when the character is different than you, that’s what’s so exciting to learn. You excavate the parts of yourself that are the darkest, that scare you for the purpose of bringing the characters’ world to life. It’s an opportunity to think about the world differently than we are.”
People are also reading…
Lola Petticrew plays a serial killer in "Furious."
For Rossum, who played a less buttoned-up role in “Shameless,” “Furious” was a chance to explore someone reserved, “very disconnected.”
That’s true of the serial killer, too, played by Lola Petticrew. Both have had violence in their lives and, says Rossum, “they’re both needing extremes to feel."
“For me, that’s very different. I’m somebody who is deeply feeling at all time, like the wind could blow, and I will feel everything," Rosssum says. "For me to channel my way into this character, you have to disconnect from some of the softer, more feminine parts of yourself in order to do the job, in order to exist in a male-dominated field.”
For Petticrew, “Furious” is an opportunity to play someone who’s likable but has the space to be completely complex “and hard and gray," she says. "And then the audience comes in with their own moral lines and we push them further and further until people are justifying things they didn’t think they could justify.”
Produced by "New Girl" creator Elizabeth Meriwether, “Furious” emerged from her desire to watch dark murder stories after a long day at the office writing comedy.
Emmy Rossum, left, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine in an episode of "Furious."
“We’re all interested in people and humans at extreme points in their lives and the choices they make at that point,” Meriwether says. “That’s why I’m drawn to those stories.”
Like others, she says she can’t believe such violence exists in everyday life.
“There’s a detachment from reality that is so far removed from most people’s personal lives. I don’t think it’s a sick fascination. It’s an intrigue — ‘I can’t believe that humanity does these things’ — it’s more of a surprise," Meriwether says.
Says Rossum: “It scratches that itch of wanting things to be OK. ‘I have to know that the people I care about end up OK.’ My mom likes to read the last page of a book before she invests in the characters, because she wants to know if the protagonist is going to die. She’s protecting herself from that wound. When we watch a show, we want to lose ourselves in it.”
“Furious” streams on Hulu. New episodes Mondays.
