Shameless fans aren’t the only ones who miss watching Shanola Hampton and Steve Howey play love interests.
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly about her hit NBC series Found, Hampton, 47, showed her support for our suggestion that Howey, 47, make a guest appearance. “Let’s talk about my best friend Steve Howey,” she told Us. “I might be a little biased but he’s hot, right? He’s got swag and he’s a manly man.”
Hampton liked the idea of sharing the screen with Howey again.
“[My character] Gabi needs someone that can be like, ‘Sit down and let me take the lead. I’m planning the date today,’” she noted. “Any version of Steve Howey that I could get on Found, I’ll take because I would work with him for the rest of my life.”
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Before Hampton was cast as the lead on Found, she was best known for her role as Veronica Fisher on Shameless. Howey, for his part, played Veronica’s husband and the pair have remained close since the show ended in 2021.
“Steve Howey needs a job, Hollywood. It’s not a joke. I am dead serious — hire him,” Hampton quipped. “He is everything that you would [think he is]. He’s hot, he’s talented and he’s funny. He has everything. He should have his own show.”
Shameless, which ran for 11 seasons, focused on the Gallagher family as they dealt with their father’s alcoholism, poverty, affairs, crimes and scams while living in the South Side of Chicago. The dramedy is far different in tone from Found, which follows public relations specialist and crisis manager Gabi (Hampton) and her team of associates as they work to find missing people who have been ignored or forgotten by law enforcement.
“Anyone from Shameless would be fantastic on our show because that’s my family. So if I got to play with them in the sandbox on Found [that would be great], even though it would be so weird for them,” Hampton continued. “Because Veronica was so full of life and vivacious. So to see Gabi who rarely smiles would probably be [weird]. But in between takes, I’m still singing and dancing.”
While Found primarily focuses on the week-to-week cases, it also centers around Gabi’s relationship with her own kidnapper, Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). The show introduced their dynamic with Gabi kidnapping Sir in the present timeline — as viewers learned from flashbacks about how Sir kidnapped Gabi when she was a teenager. Season 2 picked up after Sir escaped Gabi’s basement.
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“If you look at just the finales — if you do a back to back of the finale — Gabi ends up on the floor crying after revealing her biggest secret to everyone she loves and ruining their lives [at the end of season 1],” Hampton recalled. “At the end of the finale of this season, there is a blow up — but it’s in a powerful way.”
Hampton couldn’t tease too much about how season 2 would end but she’s looking forward to keeping the story going.
“We’ve done such a good job of really highlighting underserved communities just across the board. I just want to see more of that and us really being of service to those communities,” she explained. “It’s been such a pleasure to really dug into these meaningful stories. There’s still so many more of those stories.”
Hampton continued: “You’re talking about 600,000 missing people. We have a lot of stories to tell and different versions and different ways to tell them. So there’s nothing that I specifically want [to see happen] until I read it. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m so glad we’re doing that. I want to see that.’”
Found airs on NBC Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET and new episodes are available the next day on Peacock.
