Emmy Rossum Named RAINN Ambassador Amid New Partnership to Deepen Public Understanding of Sexual Violence and Survivorship (Exclusive)

Emmy Rossum has been named an ambassador for RAINN, the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, as the actress and nonprofit launch a new partnership focused on deepening the public’s understanding of sexual violence and survivorship.

The Furious star will unite her platform as an artist and storyteller with the nonprofit’s expertise in survivor support to explore how storytelling can inform the public around the realities and misconceptions about sexual trauma and healing. The partnership aims to challenge stigma, amplify survivor voices, use storytelling to connect survivors with critical resources and encourage more thoughtful representations of sexual violence across the entertainment industry.

“Working on Furious alongside psychologists and survivors reminded me that there is no perfect way to be a survivor,” Rossum says. “I’ve been so moved by the conversations the show has started. As we’ve seen too often of late, survivors are everywhere — from the halls of Congress to college campuses to the film industry — and this conversation belongs to all of us. 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 collaboration extends the connection to these issues that Rossum, among the nation’s more than 78 million survivors of sexual violence, developed while preparing for her critically acclaimed performance in Hulu’s Furious as Alice Black, an FBI agent and abuse survivor. While making the Elizabeth Meriwether-created series, production leaned on a community of consultants, including numerous 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.

“To tell these stories without re-traumatizing viewers, without explicitly showing the trauma, but instead, as Liz so cleverly did, showing the aftermath of the trauma, takes a lot of care,” the actress says. “What I’m most proud of in our show is how we demonstrated that survivors need not be innocent or likable to deserve dignity or justice. I think understanding the nuances of these crimes, understanding the struggles of survivors and how imperfect people still deserve the right to justice is important.”

The announcement comes one day before Rossum will appear at Raising the Prevention Generation, an invite-only event for survivors, allies and advocates, co-hosted by WME and RAINN. The intimate brunch and sitdown in L.A. will feature Rossum; RAINN founder and president Scott Berkowitz; Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, RAINN vp, communications; 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 span how the adults in children’s lives can talk about sexual violence, consent and boundaries in a digital world and how everyone can turn current conversations into meaningful action.

“One of the most meaningful parts of our work at WME is helping our clients turn what they care deeply about into real impact. Storytelling has an incredible power to change hearts, minds and perspectives, and Emmy’s commitment to using her voice with such care and purpose is a beautiful example of that,” says Jeanell English, head of community and impact at WME. “Together with RAINN’s decades of expertise, this partnership creates an opportunity to spark important conversations, challenge stigma and make a meaningful difference in how survivors are seen, heard and supported.”

Friday’s talk will mark the first step in Rossum and RAINN’s newly minted alliance, which sprung out of a connection made during WME’s inaugural Women’s Health Summit, held in Los Angeles on Oct. 15. Rossum and RAINN chief of victim services Megan Cutter’s intimate fireside conversation “Furious? Good. Now What?” explored the ongoing myths and stereotypes that shape how sexual violence is perceived, the ways survivors respond to trauma and why survivor agency matters.

“In recent weeks, calls to RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline increased 73 percent,” Cutter says. “The country is having a hard and necessary conversation about sexual violence right now. Too often, what’s missing is an understanding of what survivors actually go through: that trauma responses vary, that there is no single right way to react and that healing looks different for everyone. 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 collaboration is particularly timely, arriving amid a moment flooded with national headlines and public discussions about sexual assault in the film and TV industry, on college campuses like Cornell University and the University of Chicago, as well as the campaign trail, in states like Maine, Ohio and Arizona.

“Cornell isn’t an outlier. It’s a reflection of what happens on campuses and in communities every day. The difference is that people are paying attention right now,” says Berkowitz. “[It] landed hard because it felt so real. The details differ, but for the tens of millions of Americans who’ve experienced sexual violence, this story was personal and for a lot of parents, it was a wake-up call. Nobody wants their kid to be a victim — or a perpetrator.”

The partnership also comes nearly a decade after the #MeToo movement changed public discourse around sexual violence and how survivors are treated. In the years since, the movement has faced backlash and shifts in attention and momentum, but alongside the recent news about campus assaults, Rossum explains why addressing sexual assault must go beyond a moment. “#MeToo was an incredibly important watershed moment in culture. But all social movements require sustained action,” says Rossum. “Sunlight remains the best disinfectant. What happened at Cornell needs to be brought into the light. When our leaders foster a culture that threatens the safety of women, it needs to be called out directly and swiftly.”

According to the actress and producer, the most impactful way she and her fellow creative community members can do that is by tackling the issues through storytelling. “There is something about taking the shame out of things by putting them on screen for us to see, warts and all. A character can reach us emotionally in a way that a PSA can’t. We aren’t just being told about something. We’re feeling it alongside someone, and that can change how we understand and treat each other,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s the power of stories to me: It can take something that feels isolating and create a connection around it.”

That’s why stories are at the forefront of her upcoming work with RAINN. “They can make us feel seen and less alone. That connection matters long after the headlines go away,” says Rossum. “No one was asking for Furious or Josephine or I May Destroy You or even Obsession, which sparked important conversations about consent. But audiences turned out because they’re phenomenal stories about something important. We need to keep telling them.”

For RAINN, partnering with a storyteller like Rossum means the conversation around sexual assault, trauma and survivorship does not only have to live within a news cycle and “can reach people who’ve never thought of sexual violence as their issue and help keep this conversation going long after the headlines fade,” says Berkowitz.

“The stakes of not talking about this are high. When people don’t understand consent, harm happens. When friends don’t know what to look for, they don’t step in. And when survivors don’t recognize what happened to them, or the people they confide in respond with doubt or blame, healing gets much harder,” he continues. “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.”