"I feel like I'm 56," Emma Kenney tells me over breakfast in West Hollywood. Twenty minutes later: "I’m literally like a grandma." Shortly before our time is up: "I don't wanna go to a party on New Year's Eve … Nothing sounds worse than having to be surrounded by people you don't like in a sequined dress." She’s 18.
If you follow Kenney on Instagram, you know she’s more social than she’s letting on. But it’s true that for every Insta Story featuring her friends, there’s one of her in bed, streaming TV on her laptop, hanging out with her cat, Cheddar, and German Shepard-Terrier, Charlie. And there are even more of her at work. "I’ve been so busy recently, but I love that," she says. "I’m a Virgo and that’s how I thrive." (If you follow her on IG, you also know she’s obsessed with astrology.)
Kenney is best known for playing Debbie Gallagher on the ever-excellent Shameless, a role she landed when she was ten. With the series' eighth season in the bag (Showtime recently renewed it for a ninth), Kenney’s now shooting ABC's Roseanne reboot, playing Darlene and David’s 16-year-old daughter, Harris. "She’s a lot more artsy than Debbie," Kenney says of her latest character. "She’s sort of like a young Darlene — very sarcastic. She's not meant for Lanford, Illinois [where the show takes place]. I think she wants to be somewhere else."
It’s not lost on the New Jersey native that she stars in two shows about working-class families. "I think about that a lot," she says. "Somebody commented on my Instagram today, actually, that Roseanne was their favorite show back in the day because it made their family feel more normal." (The series, created by Roseanne Barr, originally aired from 1988 to 1997.) "And I've been told that about Shameless often. It's cool to see not only the rich kid make it. Not everybody's life is like Gossip Girl. You're not always going to look super glamorous in the morning when you wake up. Everything's not perfect."
Kenney describes her own upbringing as "very humble." Her dad, who moved with her from Jersey to L.A. when she was 16, is a freelance journalist and her mom is a lawyer. "I went to public school my entire life. Now I'm just proud of myself that I'm working hard, that I have a good worth ethic. I like buying shit for myself. I love that I'm 18 right now and everything that I buy is from something that I've done."
Her first major purchase will be a house (she’s thinking Laurel Canyon and will likely buy next year), and in the meantime, she’s been renting a place with a roommate since May. "I actually had a talk with [my dad] the other night," she says. "I got dinner with him and I was like, 'Dad, I’m okay, you can go back [to New Jersey]. I’ve got my stuff settled out here now. Like, I have a house now! You can go.' He goes, 'Okay, I’m thinking about it. But you’re only 18!' I’m like, 'I know, dad, but I’m an adult.'"
She’s technically right, but Hollywood is a ruthless place, especially for child stars, and it's reasonable for her dad to worry. "When you’re 15, you have [club] promoters who want you to be at their table because you're on a TV show or something," she says. "But that's just not the scene I want to interact in. I'm interested in being a professional actress. I'm here for the long haul, and I don't want to get caught up in things that just make you feel bad the next day."
It helps that she isn’t the star of, say, a Disney show. "I had the perfect level, growing up, between being normal and having a little taste into Hollywood," she says. "People would recognize me once in a while, but I could still go out and have my life." (On that note, she's adamant that everyone lay off the cast of Stranger Things. "They're babies!") It also helps that she has a surrogate family in her Shameless costars. "We all look out for each other," she says.
"I went through a phase when I was 13 or 14, I would tweet emo things about my feelings and boys who didn't like me and mean girls in school. My mother would delete my tweets and I would tweet petty [things] like, 'When your mom deletes your tweet.' Something crazy. Then I probably talked to Emmy [Rossum] or Shanola [Hampton], and they were like, 'Dude, why are you promoting such bad, negative things? Why are you tweeting these things?' They're not even tastefully said.'"
On the subject of Rossum’s pay dispute last year (she successfully negotiated equal pay with William H. Macy), Kenney says, "I'm happy that [was] public. Emmy is very strong. She should be getting equal pay to Bill Macy. I really look up to her strength in general. She’s always told me, 'Emma, why use your voice just to talk about things and say how bad they are and how sad things are in the world? Do [something] to make a difference rather than just talk about it.'"
Eventually, Kenney says, she'd like to go to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study writing and directing; and, yes, she'll continue acting. "Whatever I do, I want to be happy, as cliché as that is," she says. "I want to surround myself with positive people. It's kinda cool to be young, because you have the world as your oyster. There's so many things that you can do, regardless of what you were handed, what experiences you had — this is your time. So I'm trying to take everything in and embrace it." Spoken like a true 18-year-old.
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