William H. Macy Just Gave Details On Emmy Rossum's Final 'Shameless' Episode

Back in August, Emmy Rossum shocked Shameless fans everywhere by announcing that she would be departing from the long-running Showtime dramedy at the end of its ninth season. Now, Season 9 of Shameless is officially halfway done airing, and fans are more curious than ever about how the show will say goodbye to Fiona Gallagher. Of course, we won't know what happens until it airs, but William H. Macy promised that Emmy Rossum's final Shameless episode is "genius," and that it may surprise fans of the show.

William H. Macy opened up about finding out his co-star Emmy Rossum was leaving Shameless and how the show will say goodbye to her character of Fiona Gallagher during an interview on SiriusXM's The Michelle Collins Show. Macy revealed that he and the rest of the cast and crew of Shameless knew that Rossum was going to announce leaving the show before they started Season 9, so the writers worked hard to make sure the final episodes of the season were the perfect sendoff. When the time came to read through the final scripts of the season, Macy said that showrunner John Wells was prepared to give Fiona the perfect goodbye scene with each character:

[John Wells] gave this little speech, he said 'OK, we're coming up on the last show, I know everybody has an idea about their scene with Emmy.' And I didn't understand exactly what he was saying until we got to it and the script came out, and sure enough everyone, including me, went to John saying, 'Yeah, it's a good script, but I was thinking for my last scene with Emmy...' And we all wanted a boo-hoo fest saying goodbye to Ms. Rossum. And John saw it coming because he's been around for a long time, so he gently said 'Let me take care of it.' And boy, he threw a curveball to my character. I had to read the script a bunch of times before I realized the genius of what he had done, and it's really a great ending.

Check out William H. Macy's full interview below:

Perhaps the most interesting part of that explanation of the Season 9 finale is that Frank's big goodbye to Fiona is a "curveball." Hmm... Shameless loves to give viewers unexpected twists, so could this mean that Frank's last moments with Fiona will be something out of character for Frank? I guess Frank's whole thing is that he is a terrible father, so this curveball moment could be suggesting that Frank actually shows some real love and kindness to Fiona before saying goodbye to her.

Luckily, Shameless fans still have a handful of new episodes to look forward to before the season finale. The show returns from its three-month hiatus this Sunday, Jan. 20 to begin the final seven episodes of Season 9. The season finale, which will be Emmy Rossum's last episode, will air in March. Rossum gave fans a glimmer of hope recently, saying that she knows the door is always open for her to return to the show if it ever feels right. So, maybe this won't be goodbye forever.