Emmy Rossum has been named an ambassador for RAINN, the country's largest anti-sexual violence organization, as the actress and the nonprofit launch a partnership focused on deepening public understanding of sexual violence and survivorship.
The Furious star will combine her platform as an artist and storyteller with the organization's expertise in survivor support, with the goal of challenging stigma, amplifying survivor voices, connecting survivors with critical resources and encouraging more thoughtful depictions of sexual violence across the entertainment industry.
Rossum is among the nation's more than 78 million survivors of sexual violence and developed her connection to the issue while preparing for her critically acclaimed role in Hulu's Furious as Alice Black, an FBI agent and abuse survivor. During production of the Elizabeth Meriwether created series, the show relied on a community of consultants that included survivors of sex trafficking, intimate partner violence experts, forensic psychologists, trauma therapists, FBI agents and human trafficking task force members. RAINN also served as a script consultant on the studio side during the show's early development.
"Working on Furious alongside psychologists and survivors reminded me that there is no perfect way to be a survivor," Rossum said. "Through my partnership with RAINN, I hope to turn that awareness into action: opening up conversations, breaking down stigma and helping more survivors find pathways to connection, support and healing."
The announcement came Wednesday, one day before Rossum is set to appear at Raising the Prevention Generation, an invite-only brunch and sitdown in Los Angeles for survivors, allies and advocates co-hosted by WME and RAINN. The event will also feature RAINN founder and president Scott Berkowitz, RAINN vice president of communications Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, Aspire Titan Academy student mental health therapist Skye Choe, and Dr. Karen Kay Imagawa, medical director of the Audrey Hepburn CARES Center at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The discussion will cover how adults in children's lives can talk about sexual violence, consent and boundaries in a digital world.
The Friday event marks the first step in an alliance that grew out of a connection made during WME's inaugural Women's Health Summit in Los Angeles on Oct. 15, where Rossum and RAINN chief of victim services Megan Cutter held a fireside conversation titled "Furious? Good. Now What?" Cutter said calls to RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline have increased 73 percent in recent weeks, adding that "Emmy and WME were committed to telling these stories with integrity long before this moment, and that's what makes them the right partners to help carry this conversation forward."
The partnership arrives amid national headlines about sexual assault in the film and television industry, on college campuses including Cornell University and the University of Chicago, and on the campaign trail in states such as Maine, Ohio and Arizona. "Cornell isn't an outlier. It's a reflection of what happens on campuses and in communities every day," Berkowitz said, calling the story a wake-up call for many parents.
Rossum said the collaboration comes nearly a decade after the #MeToo movement changed public discourse, and that addressing sexual violence requires sustained action. "Sunlight remains the best disinfectant," she said. She argued that storytelling is the most powerful tool her creative community has, telling The Hollywood Reporter that a character "can reach us emotionally in a way that a PSA can't," citing series such as I May Destroy You and Obsession alongside Furious as stories that sparked important conversations about consent.
For RAINN, Berkowitz said, working with a storyteller like Rossum means the conversation about trauma and survivorship does not have to live within a news cycle and "can reach people who've never thought of sexual violence as their issue." He added: "Sexual assault isn't an abstract statistic. It's happening to people we know and love and talking about it openly is how we prevent it and how we support survivors."
