William H. Macy supported her bid.

Emmy Rossum is at Sundance with her new movie “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” but the Emmy winner has more than that on her mind. Rossum stopped by the IndieWire Studio Presented by Dropbox, where she also addressed her successful bid to receive equal pay with her “Shameless” co-star William H. Macy (who supported her). Part of accomplishing that, she said, was being “willing to walk away to get what I felt was right.” Watch below.

“The first step to anything is having an awareness of it before you can change the fundamental systemic problems that created and support it,” she said while flanked by her “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” castmates. “Before my renegotiation was up, I had to be willing to walk away to get what I felt was right — and we went through obviously a long period of negotiation that was private, and then at a certain point it kind of became public.”

“When you love your show and you love the people you work with, obviously you want to keep doing it. And when the business side of what you do becomes public in that way, it really doesn’t feel great. It’s embarrassing,” Rossum continued. “But something brilliant came from that: We won, and so many people were empowered because of it. I stand with all the women who are fighting for pay equity and everything that they deserve — and that goes not just in our very little insular industry, that goes for government and doctors and nurses and teachers and farm workers.”

Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, Martin Mull, and Joel McHale also star in the film, which Netflix will release on January 26.

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