#but yeah basically

disclaimer, as always: this is all my personal opinion but i did go to drama school and have a degree in acting. i just like talking about it and we’re in a pandemic. 

it’s important to remember that when a child actor is cast in a role – this isn’t 100% all the time but in a majority – they’re not looking at whether they’re a fantastic actor, they’re looking to make sure they can take direction and fit into the family picture they’re trying to create. for shameless, they cast william h macy first, then emmy, and then built the rest of the family around them. it’s usually a happy accident or a really, really hardworking actor if they end up actually being good. 

regardless, children are the best scene partners. kids are reactive and don’t think about their actions. they don’t overthink their impulses and they definitely don’t play to please people. kids will do what they want. this is basically what all good (adult) actors try to achieve. we want to be reactive and follow all our impulses without thought – this is what results in natural and interesting performances. 

we lose this childlike quality as we get older. we become more aware of our surroundings and other people’s judgements, our impulses are interrupted by habits. we worry about what people think, we worry about looking good. we stop following our impulses and start to plan. actors have to work really fucking hard to overcome this and remain truthful in their scenes. 

this is often what happens with child actors who continue acting as adults (often in the same roles for a long period of time like emma or ethan, or another example, kiernan shipka as sally draper in mad men) – the reason we see such a difference between emma’s performance as younger debbie vs older debbie, is that she is aware of being an actor now. she’s aware of her actions and she plans. you can see this in her scenes. this is why you don’t believe a word that comes out of debbie’s mouth – it doesn’t seem like emma believes them when she says them. this is the stark difference with jeremy’s acting, noel’s acting, shanola’s acting. she’s not living in the moment – she’s planning what move to do next. sure, the writing now doesn’t do her any favours but in my personal opinion, a lot of it could be helped if i actually believed her during her scenes. instead, i’m usually just cringing and waiting for them to be over. 

as a kid, she was living truthfully as debbie during scenes...it’s been a very, very long time since we saw any of that truth from emma.