Yahoo News Jessica Szohr on Shameless, Gossip Girl & Ed Westwick
She's best known for playing Vanessa, Dan's BFF from Brooklyn, on Gossip Girl - which turned 10 in September - but these days you can catch Jessica Szohr as Nessa, Fiona's new tenant, on Shameless. Here, Szohr talks about her new role, GG, and the recent sexual assault allegations against her former co-star Ed Westwick.
Were you a fan of Shameless before you booked the role?
I was. I had known Jeremy [Allen White, who plays Lip] for years when I was living in New York, so when he booked the pilot, and then when it was picked up, a bunch of us got together and watched it. I watched it for the first couple seasons and then I didn't stay caught up, and then when I was asked to come in to take the meeting and audition for it, I had called my manager and I'm like, "Do I need to watch these three seasons?" And I was always a big fan - you just know how TV is now. You'll get into something and if for one second leave it, you go back and you have so much to catch up on. But I was always a fan of it. I think the actors are incredible, I think the writing's amazing.
Did your manager tell you to catch up? What did you decide to do?
It came up pretty quickly. I ended up watching a few of the episodes from where I had left off, just to kind of get the tone and see where everyone was, and then I went and auditioned and within, like, two days they had offered it to me and I was super excited, and it was such a great season and awesome working with Emmy [Rossum, who plays Fiona]. In this next episode coming up you see that I am introduced a little bit more to the family.
Did the cast do anything to welcome you?
They gave a really nice introduction at the table read. When you come into a show and everyone's working together, it's kind of like [you're] the new kid on the block and everyone knows each other, but they couldn't have been sweeter or nicer, more professional. When you're going into something after a couple of seasons, sometimes people tend to get lazy or they're not as excited or they complain a lot. And I didn't really get that vibe with this [cast] at all. It felt like they had just got picked up and were so excited to have this job. It was a real blessing to be a part of that and see that and to know that people still worked that way. When I say that, it's not like all the other projects I've done wasn't that way; this was just a breath of fresh air for me.
