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Emmy Rossum Laid Out the Exact Cost of Women “Having It All”

Updated 3 hours ago, August 17, 2026

On Call Her Daddy, Emmy Rossum talked about what it’s cost her to “have it all”.

Emmy Rossum at the 24th Critics' Choice Awards arrivals in Santa Monica, California — Barker Hangar in Santa Monica hosted the 24th Critics’ Choice Awards on January 13, 2019, where Emmy Rossum made an appearance on the arrivals carpet. Photo by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images.

She was on the show promoting her new Hulu series Furious, a crime drama about two tough women.

The first woman is Catherine, a serial killer played by Lola Petticrew. Like Dexter, she systematically targets men connected to a traumatic experience from her past. She’s essentially operating as a vigilante serial killer—but the show deliberately makes you question whether she’s simply a murderer or someone seeking justice that the legal system failed to deliver.

Lola Petticrew in a blue plaid off-shoulder dress with a silver chain necklace at the Hulu Furious premiere in New York City. — At Metrograph in New York City on July 16, 2026, Lola Petticrew turned out for the Hulu “Furious” premiere in a blue plaid draped dress and silver chain necklace. Photo by Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images.

Rossum plays the other woman, an FBI agent named Alice who is trying to catch Catherine. As she investigates, she starts uncovering connections between the victims and a much larger network involving sexual exploitation and powerful men who have escaped consequences.

Rossum prepared for two years for this role. She put on 10 pounds of muscle, worked with FBI consultants and agents to understand how they actually think, trained with a weapon, and studied trauma because Alice is a survivor of domestic abuse.

Emmy Rossum at the Television Academy's Inaugural Televerse Festival at JW Marriott LA Live in Los Angeles — At the Television Academy’s Inaugural Televerse Festival, held August 15, 2026 at JW Marriott LA Live in Los Angeles, Emmy Rossum makes an appearance. Photo by Chris Delmas / AFP via Getty Images.

That kind of total immersion is exactly what makes the conversation she had with Alex Cooper land the way it does. After pouring years into becoming Alice, Rossum used the Call Her Daddy podcast to push back on the idea that women can seamlessly hold a career and a family at once. The math nobody tells you, she said, is that you wind up carrying all of it and sacrificing yourself.

Rossum said, “Women are always told, You can have it all. You can. But that actually means you have to do it all and it comes at a cost. And often, that cost is not your job and not your kid, but you… The promise of having it all hides the fact that women are expected to do everything.”

Furious premiered July 27 and shot straight to #1 on Hulu — proof the work paid off. But the more honest measure of what it took isn’t the ranking; it’s the reckoning underneath it. Rossum is naming a bargain a lot of women recognize but rarely hear said out loud: that “having it all” can quietly mean giving up yourself. That she can say it from the top of the charts is exactly what gives it weight.

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