Sunday’s episode ofShamelesscouldn’t have been any bigger for both V and Shanola Hampton.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: They didn’t ease you in at all, huh?
They gave you the biggest episode of the season so far!
Shanola Hampton (center) in ‘Shameless’.Paul Sarkis/SHOWTIME
So we are going to do thisandthisanda car crash?!
Okay, great."
And I just jumped in.
Shanola Hampton behind the scenes on ‘Shameless’.Paul Sarkis/SHOWTIME
I was ready for it.
How did you directing in the final season come about?
Is this something you’ve long hoped to do on the show?
Ethan Cutkosky, Jeremy Allen White, Emma Kenney, and William H. Macy in ‘Shameless’.Paul Sarkis/SHOWTIME
I wanted to do three different directors.
I stayed every day, between 12 and 17 hours, just really learning everything.
It really is a dream come true.
Did you do all your shadowing in season 10, which was shot pre-pandemic?
Yeah, I did all of my shadowing in season 10.
So my eight-day shoot ended up going a month because it kept getting pushed.
This was the episode that never ends.
Oh wow, I didn’t realize that false-positive situation was on your episode.
Was on my episode!
But you just roll with the punches.
Again, it’s great because these are my people.
I’m known to be an energetic person, so I can kind of get it back fairly quickly.
What was it like directing these actors who you’ve worked with so closely for 11 years?
With those trusted and established relationships, I have to imagine it just made it that much easier.
We don’t really see each other at work that much.
So I had such an appreciation for the talent and for everyone’s process, that’s number one.
And because I knew what I was doing, that was easy to prove!
Was it a coincidence that you ended up getting Kev and V’s wedding?
Or did they feel like, who better than you?
It was just one of those things that happened and fell in my episode.
Sherman Payne wrote such a wonderful script.
They’re finally just Kev and V married, and it was an honor.
So it was really sort of surreal but super-fun.
The outtakes on that are funny.
What’s it been like being partners in this together for so long?
It’s been incredible.
Steve is now one of my best friends and one of my soulmates in this world.
It felt right to be able to bring closure to Kev and V, to have them be married.
They are forever, they are the endgame it’s always been that way.
And it’s be an absolute privilege to play tennis with Steve Howey.
Did you have a favorite moment from this episode?
So if you wreck it wrong, it’s done, the crash is a bust.
[Laughs] It was fabulous.
What was it like shooting those?
It was Bill just going, “I have dementia?”
It’s so simple and subtle, and that’s what he’s a genius is.
Where those issues that you felt it was important for V to be active in?
I think that is whatShamelesshas done well throughout.
We always tackled the topics, and we tackle it in a way that is not PC.
People have lived in their neighborhoods for forever and ever, and they’re being pushed out.
That is a very real thing.
It’s, you’re in the lower income bracket, so we don’t offer these things.
I saw on social media that you all have been recently shooting the series finale.
Have you wrapped yet?
What have the emotions been like the last few days?
Yesterday I said goodbye to two sets.
Wrapping that set was huge, and it was all the emotions.
It was pride because we still have such a love for each other, as corny as it sounds.
You don’t hear about us fighting because we don’t, not in that way.
We really are a family, we love each other so much.
C’mon, it doesn’t happen!
That feeling never died down, it never got old.
And that’s how I feel about working with these people it never got old.
It’s not that feeling at all.
It’s, “We’ve done it guys.
We’ve done a really, really good job.”
And the honest-to-God truth is we could have gone for another season and been happy.
But I am not in any way under the impression that this is something that is normal.
I’m just so proud.
You’re right in the middle of it now, so how would you describe the finale?
There will be some great callbacks to where we started in that pilot.
Still one of the very best pilots that has ever been on TV!
That is not because I’m on it… that pilot had everything.
you could expect to be satisfied and to reminisce.
Shamelessairs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.
