Gabriel Macht, Rick Hoffman, more reveal secrets

Try to imagine Suits without Gabriel Macht starring as legal shark Harvey Specter or Patrick J. Adams playing his con man protégé Mike Ross.

You can’t, right? The chemistry between the dynamic duo of Macht and Adams is why USA Network’s legal drama worked so well that it ran for nine seasons — and why it saw an unprecedented resurgence in 2023, four years after it ended (due, in no small part, to Harvey and Mike’s interview scene from the pilot going viral on TikTok before the series began streaming on Netflix).

But creator Aaron Korsh and the rest of the team behind Suits had no idea that Macht and Adams would work so well together … because they never actually tested their onscreen dynamic in a chemistry read before filming began. The entire premise of the show relied on a very big risk that paid off, against all odds. (As any of the Suits characters would say: Goddamn.)

And yet, that was one of many risks the series, and its creator, took at the beginning. In fact, when Korsh first wrote the script for the legal drama, it wasn’t a legal drama at all. Suits actually began as a series about investment bankers, inspired by Korsh’s own experiences working on Wall Street immediately after he graduated from college.

“The original title was Dominion Capital, which was the name of the fake investment bank in the original pilot. For whatever reason, we changed it to Untitled Korsh Wall Street Project,” Korsh tells Entertainment Weekly. “Obviously I was not a fraud in real life, but during those years I sort of felt like I didn’t belong — imposter syndrome or whatever — so I decided to externalize that feeling and make it, ‘What if he really doesn’t belong? What if he’s a fraud?'”

It was USA Network executive Alex Sepiol who saw its potential as an actual series — albeit with one major change required before it could be greenlit. He told Korsh to switch the characters from investment bankers to lawyers, an edit that the creator now agrees made the show better.

“That was incredibly good for the longevity of the show, because lying about where you went to college as an investment banker, no one’s going to land in jail for that,” Korsh says. “But if you do that as a lawyer, the stakes are much higher.”

After changing the entire premise, the series needed a new title. For a while, it was known as A Legal Mind before they landed on Suits. “Different people try to claim the credit for the Suits title,” Korsh says. “In my mind, it was Alex Sepiol, the same guy that brought it in in the first place. And I will be honest, I didn’t particularly love that one either, but I liked it better than A Legal Mind, so we went with that. It’s really a triple meaning: It’s the suits they wear, it’s lawsuits, and the word ‘suit’ is what people call anyone who works in jobs that wear suits.”

After the setting, business, and title changed completely, the process of making the Suits pilot didn’t get any easier.

Opening statements

The original story of Suits — still titled A Legal Mind at the time — was very different when Korsh first pitched it to former USA Network president Jeff Wachtel.

AARON KORSH (Creator): The original take was that Harvey and Mike leave the firm. [Wachtel] said, “I love this, but why do Harvey and Mike leave the firm?” I was very inexperienced, and I was thinking, “They leave the firm because you guys told us you only do two-person shows!” And Jeff said, “We don’t do ensemble shows.” And then he takes a second and he goes, “But maybe we should. Leave them in the firm.” I was overjoyed.

Once USA Network bought the pilot, it took another two years before it actually got made because the script required extensive rewriting. But Korsh almost gave up on the project entirely because he hit a massive roadblock.

KORSH: The very first script I handed in, they thought I lost the flavor, the magic, in transferring it from Wall Street to a law show. I had a three-month nervous breakdown about that note. I did not know how to fix it. I honestly wanted to give up. But I asked tons of my writer friends for help, and I finally just did what I wanted to do, and I handed it in like, “Here’s your script, go f— yourself.” I had worked myself up into such a frenzy and I thought it sucked. But then they give us a call and they’re like, “We’re going to make it.”

The first order of business was finding a director for the pilot. It was not a painless process for Korsh.

KEVIN BRAY (Director): I was working for USA [Network] doing Burn Notice, and then I did a couple episodes of White Collar, and they were very happy with my work, and so they put me in front of Aaron and [producer] Dave Bartis as a potential director for the pilot. I had done episodic [work] in New York, but I had never done anything like a pilot, so creating something from the ground up was special.

KORSH: I had two meetings with Kevin over the phone. The first meeting was great. And then the second meeting, it was like he forgot every single thing he said in the first meeting. I was like, “Who is this guy?!” He was saying completely opposite things in the second meeting, which is, if you get to know him, sort of classic Kevin. But because of that, I didn’t trust him. I didn’t want to use him, but [USA execs] were like, “You have to use him.” Within one day of working together, I was like, “This guy is like my brother.” He’s one of my closest friends to this day. We bickered, but he did an amazing job on the pilot, and his energy was a key component to not just the pilot, but the whole series.

BRAY: My pitch for the show was “How to Make It In America has a baby with Michael Clayton.” There was something fresh and cinematic about the pilot Aaron had written. It was very, very long, and it kind of felt like a complete film, so that’s how I approached it: as if I was directing a movie.

Jury selection

It took years, and a lot of hard work, to get the pilot ready for what came next, which proved to be the biggest challenge of all: casting.

KORSH: It was a cast-contingent pilot order, meaning we couldn’t do anything until we cast Harvey and Mike.

BONNIE ZANE (Casting Director): It was 2010, and my former partner, Gayle Pillsbury, and I were sent the script, A Legal Mind. We went in with this big blank slate, but Gayle mentioned Patrick immediately, which we always used to do just for fun, and I loved that idea but I didn’t think it would actually happen. And she was casting Pretty Little Liars simultaneously and I said, “It has to be Troian” [Bellisario, Adams’ wife]. And that was before they had even met!

KORSH: I remember Patrick coming in and reading and killing it. I don’t remember how many times, but we kept bringing him back, and he kept doing great. We were like, “This is the man to beat,” and no one ever beat him.

Other actors who auditioned for the role of Mike Ross include Jeremy Jordan, David Alpay (who ended up on the show later in the recurring role of a real estate developer beginning in season 7), Andrew West (before he starred on The Walking Dead), Michael Rady, Josh Lawson, Michael Cassidy, and Colin Donnell (pre-Arrow).

ZANE: We cast Mike first. Actors all come in reading the same material, and for Mike, it was the introduction scene when he meets Harvey with the suitcase of weed, and also when he meets Rachel on the tour of the office. Patrick got the job, and he tested against Shawn Ashmore and Escher Holloway.

KORSH: Casting Harvey was much more difficult.

Before Macht entered the chat, many, many actors auditioned for Harvey Specter — including a few who would end up on the show in other roles: Jeffrey Nordling (who played recurring character Eric Kaldor), Matt Letscher (who ended up on spinoff Suits LA), Jay Harrington (who appeared in season 7 as one of Donna’s ex-boyfriends), and Currie Graham (who played a judge in episode 2).

ZANE: There’s a couple of actors that probably don’t remember passing originally, and their agents [would] call [in later seasons] and say, “What about him for this lawyer role you’re casting?” I’m thinking, “He could have been Harvey!”

KORSH: We actually made an offer to someone who turned us down, and I don’t even know if Gabriel knows this, but I had a guy that I knew that was a great actor. I will not say his name, but I loved him, and I knew him personally, and I wanted him to be Harvey. I thought his audition was outstanding, but for whatever reason, the network was not a fan of his. They liked him in comedic roles, but they didn’t love him in this role. Then we met Gabriel. I remember Dave Bartis saying, “Gabriel is a movie star,” and I said, “The definition of a movie star is that I’ve heard of him, and I’ve never heard of him.”

GABRIEL MACHT (Harvey Specter): I was doing a bunch of film work at the time, and I had done one series a few years back and was fired and replaced on it, which turned out to be a blessing. I didn’t want to get into one show and be known for one character for my entire career. And it sort of has become, in a sense, that way. This came around, I read it, and I found out that there was an offer out to a friend of mine, and he decided not to do it. I said, “If this doesn’t happen with this fellow, see if they’re willing to talk to me, and I’ll go meet them.”

ZANE: At that point, Gabriel had been doing a lot of films, and when we finally got him in the room, he didn’t have to go through the whole process. And the funny thing was — and Patrick reminds me of this — they never had a chemistry read. We just took a flyer on that without ever testing that magic.

MACHT: I told them I wasn’t going to read, I was just going to meet with them. And Hollywood is so full of it. They say, “You don’t have to read,” and then you show up, and there’s a camera, and they ask you to read. But I really liked the chemistry between Mike and Harvey, and I love that Harvey was this guy that was not like me at all, so I was like, “Okay, I’ll read.”

KORSH: He ended up auditioning reluctantly, and I was alone in the room with him, and I was too inexperienced to push him to do better in his audition. He just wanted to get it over with. It was not great.

MACHT: I heard a story recently — they all said it was a terrible audition. And it probably was. I’m terrible at auditions, so what can you do? But then I still ended up getting it.

KORSH: Oh, here’s the other thing: [the network executives’] initial read on Harvey was that he should be a 50-year-old guy, and that would’ve made the Harvey-Mike dynamic father and son, not brothers. But for me personally, it’s [based on] me and my brother, so I really fought against that. If Harvey is 50 and still trying to sleep with women every night, that’s sad to me, as opposed to a guy in his mid-upper-30’s who hasn’t matured yet. That’s a different story.

Because the top brass at USA Network was not impressed with Macht’s audition, Korsh was given an ultimatum: either convince them that Macht was the right choice for Harvey or turn the character into a 50-year-old man.

KORSH: I didn’t know what to do. I was freaking out. To be honest with you, I wasn’t even sure Gabriel was the right guy for the part at that time, but what I knew was, if we don’t hire Gabriel, this show isn’t going to work because they’re going to make me hire a 50-year-old man. I wrote this big email saying, “I’m not going to tell you that Gabriel’s audition was great, but what I will tell you is this man has the charisma of Bradley Cooper. I know it. And I watched ABC pass on Bradley Cooper. If you pass on him, you are passing on Bradley Cooper.” I still have that email somewhere. And they said, “Okay, you can have him,” and then we were off to the races. I’ve never told Gabriel that story.

Once the castings for Harvey and Mike were locked in, it was time to find the rest of the series regulars. The first piece of the puzzle? Wacky villain (who would ultimately become a beloved antihero-turned-hero) Louis Litt, who would be played by Rick Hoffman.

ZANE: We had such a variety of actors auditioning. It was a lot of these kind of leading men, and tons and tons of character guys. Like Daniel Sunjata, who ended up getting Graceland, another show that we did; David Costabile read for Louis Litt, and then he came back in and became [series villain Daniel] Hardman; Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who ended up recurring on the series in a big way [in season 6 as prison psychologist Dr. Julius Rowe]; Peter Cambor, who Aaron specifically wanted to call back for the role that he eventually recurred in, leading the pro bono place [beginning in season 4]; Chad Coleman, who went on to get The Walking Dead; and D.B. Woodside, who came back onto Suits [in season 4 as Jessica’s boyfriend Jeff Malone].

RICK HOFFMAN (Louis Litt): Everyone in this business knows how it ebbs and flows and there’s peaks and valleys, and I was going through a valley. I started to get in an interesting, funky depression, not having a job to go to. I was like, “I guess this is it for my career.” During this funk, I get a script to audition for A Legal Mind, and as soon as I start reading it, my heart dropped, and I’ve had that feeling maybe five times in 25 years of working, because it was a heartbreak of like, “I’m not going to get this, but my God, I just want to be a part of it.” I was gutted because the character of Louis Litt really spoke to me. I saw him as Iago in Othello. I went in to audition, and Aaron immediately mentioned that he had been a fan of a show I had done eight years prior, Philly. That relaxed me enough to breathe and do the best job I could.

ZANE: When Rick came in, he’s just so flippant and inventive with everything he does. Sitting there reading with him, I really had trouble not breaking. He was genius. And he created Louis Litt in this audition. I remember we had another way to go with this really strapping, handsome guy who was kind of like a tough guy who would be more of a foe in a different way to Harvey, and then we had a really slick guy that was just a “smack face,” as I call him. But we brought Rick in and it was just undeniable.

HOFFMAN: It was the most painstaking two months of waiting to hear [after the audition]. I remember hearing that it was between me and a 6-foot-5 Black man, a very talented actor, Cress Williams. I was like, “He’s so good. Forget it. I’m dead.” And then I got the phone call, and I was rolling around in joy that I had gotten this role.

Other characters were also drastically different in the pilot script, most notably managing partner Jessica Pearson, played by Gina Torres.

KORSH: Jessica was written for a man because many of these characters were based on the real people that I used to work with on my first job, and that was a man. The network suggested that we make the role a woman, and at first I was resistant because, again, I was inexperienced and any change rattled me. But once I wrapped my head around it, I thought it was a great idea. And I actually never changed any of the dialogue for it being a man to a woman. It’s just going to be a woman saying the words instead of a man.

ZANE: Jessica’s role became an older, more matronly-type woman.

KORSH: I had in my head that this woman should be 60 because in real life, the head of a law firm would not be 40 years old. I didn’t know Gina personally, but she was one of the only cast members that I was very familiar with because I was a big fan of Firefly. I just had this mental block of, “She’s too young.” As we were going through the casting process, there was no one else we liked. Finally the studio was like, “Maybe we should just change it back to a man.” And I was like, “No, we should not.” I thought to myself, “The true essence of this role is power. And if Gina Torres doesn’t encapsulate power, then I don’t know who does.” So we brought Gina in.

ZANE: Jessica’s name was Catherine at that time in the script, and I think [the audition] was the scene with that “last minute, bad faith bulls—” line when she brings Harvey in to close. Gina, she’s so stunning, but she was nervous during her audition. And Jeff Wachtel, bless him, said, “You seem nervous. Go outside, take a few minutes. It’s fine.” So she went outside with Kevin Bray and myself, and it was just this moment of like, “You got this.” She walks back in and just took over the room. She was fantastic. It was, without a doubt, her role. So we went from this older matronly woman to this goddess, and it took months to get there, but we tried every configuration of that role: Lynn Whitfield, April Grace, Penny Johnson, Robin Givens, Jenny Gago.

Fierce, magnetic paralegal Rachel Zane was the most difficult role to cast, and ultimately took the longest before a pre-royal Meghan Markle got the job.

ZANE: We saw every single ingénue in Hollywood. It wasn’t clicking. And we tried so many different ways. There was thick Latin accents, and these glamorous girls next door, everything you can think of was attempted.

KORSH: We went to the studio and network with choices for Rachel many times before we ever met Meghan, and they kept rejecting our choices. Thank God they did, or else we never would’ve found Meghan.

ZANE: I think we must have screen tested 15 women for Rachel. It was a big, long process, because Patrick was also coming in and reading with all of them. There was Jenny Mollen, who ended up getting a role in the first season [as Gabby Stone]. She always makes fun of it, like, “I could have been a princess.” There was Torrey DeVitto who ended up on Pretty Little Liars, Alex Breckenridge, Beth Behrs, Katharine McPhee, Lauren Cohan, Kristen Hager, and Majandra Delfino. There were also a lot of actors that did not get the part but still ended up on the series. One was Christina [Cole], who played [Dr. Paula], the therapist that Harvey had a relationship with. Amanda Schull read for Rachel, and she was very young at the time. I knew she could do better, so I brought her back in and the first season, she got so close on all these big guest star roles. And then the second season, Aaron goes, “I think I have a role for Amanda,” and he writes the Katrina role. And he goes, “Have her audition,” so she had to come in and audition for the role that was written for her!

BRAY: I was pretty instrumental in the casting of Meghan Markle because I [pitched her for the role]. She was a darling when she came into the room to audition, and everybody saw it from day one.

ZANE: Meghan and Patrick had worked together in the past, which none of us knew. They didn’t even know until they got into the same space. But there was a comfort there that hit them right away, and it was this magical chemistry. She and I, our birthdays are a day apart, and I remember it was our birthday weekend and I said, “Let’s give her a birthday present. Let’s be done casting this.” And so we got her cast on the last day, and that was just wonderful.

Zane also has a surprising easter egg connection to Markle’s character.

ZANE: The character was Rachel Lane in the pilot. That [last name] didn’t clear, so we jokingly said, “What about Rachel Zane?” And then it became the name. There’s an episode called, “Zane vs. Zane,” and my parents were huge, huge fans of the show, so they loved it.

While Harvey’s secretary-turned-love-interest Donna ultimately became an integral part of the series, she was not a main character in the pilot. Macht played a huge role in getting his eventual onscreen love interest, Sarah Rafferty, cast.

ZANE: Donna was not a series regular, she was a guest star. So that was a separate thing for her casting.

MACHT: Sarah and I had gone to Williamstown Theatre Festival together years before, we had become friends, and I saw that there was a role in the [pilot], so I was like, “You want to read it? I don’t think there’s much on the page, but they say it could become regular or something.” And she read it and liked it and auditioned, and was great.

ZANE: I remember Rhea Seehorn auditioned for Donna, and then we see her go and do Better Call Saul, which was fun. There was Leslie Grossman, who does a lot of the Ryan Murphy stuff. Suzy Nakamura. It was all over the place. But then you get someone like Sarah Rafferty and there’s no one else that could have played that part, and you see in the pilot that this person has to become a fixture in this world.

MACHT: I had no idea [Harvey and Donna] were going to get to the place where they got to. I did not imagine them ever being together. I always thought they were sort of like the Moneypenny and Bond — I don’t think they ever get together, but they really trust each other. And then the writers took it in a different direction, and there were definitely fans that were shipping that whole storyline. I mean, there’s plenty of fans that were shipping Mike and Harvey, too. Some of the fan art is just hilarious and insane and very creative and brilliant.

The rest of the pilot cast rounded out with Tom Lipinski playing Mike’s friend-turned-enemy Trevor, and Vanessa Ray playing Trevor’s girlfriend (and Mike’s crush) Jenny.

ZANE: Tom Lipinski went up against Aaron Tveit, big Broadway guy, for Trevor.

TOM LIPINSKI (Trevor Evans): This was one of dozens and dozens of audition appointments that comes through your email inbox. But I remember going to the audition and feeling a little twinkle, like, “Ooh, this might fit me kind of well.” During one of my callbacks, Aaron Korsh and the director, Kevin Bray, were in the audition with me, and they were playing it very straight. Either they’d had a long day and they’d seen a lot of people and they were exhausted, or they were just trying to not give too much away, but they were very solemn and direct, and I couldn’t really tell whether they liked what I was doing or not. Who could have possibly known what was to come, right?

ZANE: For Jenny, Vanessa went up against so many girls: Caitlyn FitzGerald, Leven Rambin.

VANESSA RAY (Jenny Griffith): It was summer in New York, so I was auditioning for a thousand things at the time. I walked into the audition, and it was a super hot day and everybody was dressed in suits and sweating through them. I was like, “Oh no, I’ve made a big mistake,” because I am in shorts and a t-shirt. And then they called me back and the note was, “Can she just look more TV pretty? Could she put on makeup and try?” So I put on eyelashes and tried to look good, and then I got the job. When they called, I was like, “Phew, I’m not a troll.” And I learned a very valuable lesson: always put yourself together. Don’t just wing it, even if the casting just says “girl” on it.

Ray needed to make one more change before filming began.

RAY: I was blonde, but they were like, “We really need her to get her hair dyed. It needs to be much more blonde.” They were concerned that my hair might be confusing next to Rachel, Meghan Markle’s character. I mean, these two couldn’t look more different, but okay? I guess we’re worried about whatever audience that’s flipping through [the channels] is not going to be able to tell the difference between Rachel and Jenny. That was a pretty funny note, but I dyed my hair more blonde.

“Order in the court!”

Once all the roles were cast, it was time to assemble everyone for the first table read. It did not go well.

KORSH: The table read was a disaster. Part of it is because they made us write a 90-page version of the script because, in case it failed, they would make it into a movie to try to get their money back. There were basically 30 to 40 extra pages that were not really meant to be in the pilot, but we read them all at the table read. It was really long and slow and boring. When it was over, [producer] Doug Liman, who’s a big movie director, didn’t wait for the actors to leave, and he sort of crapped all over the pilot to the network in front of the actors. I was not happy with that, and I certainly expressed my frustration.

BRAY: The feeling I had in that moment was pretty f—ing anxious when he started giving those notes. I don’t remember what the notes were, but I know that Aaron’s energy was radiating out towards me, and I knew him well enough to know, “This is not a cool situation.” I mean, we were supposed to be shooting the next day! I remember there was a lot of hushed, whispering conversations.

MACHT: Some of the ideas [Liman] had were big picture ideas that couldn’t be tweaked when we were about to shoot the next day. I think for Doug’s table reads on his films, he probably sits for hours letting people throw out their ideas. This is not the process of television. Patrick felt that he was going to get fired the next day, because people do get fired from these things. They’re horrible.

HOFFMAN: I don’t know if I’m stupid or I just don’t have the experience with these things that others do, but when Doug Liman was giving some pretty really harsh notes, I don’t think he knew the actors weren’t supposed to stay. Patrick at the time was maybe 30, and it’s his first pilot, and yet I’m looking to him going, “Is this right?” And he’s like, “No, we’re not supposed to be here.” So I spoke up and said, “You know what? We’re just going to go outside. Is that all right? You guys mind?” And then everybody in unison was like, “Yes, good idea.”

BRAY: Aaron ultimately stuck to his own [vision], and didn’t adjust to any of those notes.

Testimony

Finally, it was time to shoot the pilot in New York City (production ultimately moved to Toronto for the remainder of the series).

MACHT: It was like a three-week pilot or something, which is unheard of. New York was a character in it, which was great. And then the show got picked up and then business came in and they sent us to Toronto, which was heartbreaking for me at the time.

BRAY: I fought aggressively to have it stay in New York, but it just was not fiscally possible for us to do it.

LIPINSKI: Back in 2010, I had a day job as a building manager at Limewire, which was in a fancy building down in Tribeca. I took two days off from work to shoot the pilot three blocks away from where I worked, in this fancy penthouse apartment. The difference between my days that week was wild.

MACHT: The first take we did was an awful take, and we could just hear the director screaming at the top of his lungs, “Don’t worry!” That was the first direction that we got, which was very funny. It was just Patrick and I walking down the street for a walk and talk, and I’m sure I was extremely nervous and overcompensating. Walking and talking at the same time is very difficult for me — I can’t really multitask. I flubbed over a bunch of lines and messed up a bunch of the syntax. I probably aged 10 years from just the walking and talking scenes [throughout all nine seasons]. I definitely had panic attacks that I didn’t realize were panic attacks at the time.

KORSH: It’s such a blur. I remember shooting that opening scene with Harvey and Gerald Tate [John Bedford Lloyd], where he says, “Your balls are in my fist,” and thinking, “Oh my God, this thing is really special.”

HOFFMAN: My first day was, I would say, not relaxed. Aaron had what he wanted in mind, but, and Aaron will attest to this, in the beginning, he wasn’t the best communicator. He learned not too long after, but we were all, in the best of ways, trying to get the scene between Jessica, Harvey, and Louis when he gets the promotion. It took a while, and I was sweating. And Gabriel sent me very strange texts to mess with me, to make me feel really weird — he and his wife purposely sent me awkward texts to get a reaction from me, and it continued on throughout all nine years. That’s Gabriel Macht for you.

KORSH: I remember thinking the interview scene with Harvey and Mike that everybody loves so much was great.

MACHT: It’s really the inciting incident of the show. Who in their right mind would ever hire some kid like this? And that’s what was so bold about that moment. That was the audition scene, so I was like, “I know this scene because I worked on it six weeks ago. It’s not like it’s brand new.” There’s just a little bit more settled feeling in it.

HOFFMAN: Victor Garber had been involved [in the pilot] playing Hardman, but [that] ended up getting cut. Then Hardman came in the second season, now played by Dave Costabile. I grew up seeing Broadway shows with Victor Garber, and I looked up to him as an actor. When I heard that Victor Garber’s scene was cut out, that was crazy to me. I was like, “Oh, wow, so I’m not the only one who’s ever been cut out of a project. It really is true that it’s not personal.”

BRAY: I was petrified, but prepared. And there was something about Patrick and Gabriel. There’s a fraternity. We have instantly created this family, on and off screen. It didn’t look contrived. It didn’t feel forced. Like, Gina had the authority and agency in her presence for you to not doubt that she could be the head of this law firm. And Obama was president at that time — that’s important — so we were reflecting the hopefulness of what was going on in the country.

KORSH: There’s nothing I would change about the pilot today. Are you kidding me? I don’t want to go back and run another marathon. I’m already regretting doing it now for [canceled spinoff] Suits LA. Right now, I am satisfied with the totality of what we did, and I don’t need to go back and nitpick it.

But Korsh knows there’s one part of the pilot that doesn’t work a decade and a half later: Trevor’s briefcase of marijuana that forces Mike to run from the cops directly into a job interview with Harvey.

LIPINSKI: You go into the city now and every single street corner just reeks of weed. It’s funny how dated it feels now.

KORSH: I’m glad that I don’t have to think about what I’d sub in for that [weed], because it’s a problem. If the pilot were made today, the weed wouldn’t work. Back then, even though weed was illegal, it didn’t make him a horrible person that he was doing this one-time weed [deal]. But if you made it cocaine or heroin or Fentanyl, people would hate him. It wouldn’t be just a matter of, “Let’s substitute a different illegal drug.” He would be unlikeable, so I don’t know what you’d do. That’s why I say, “Thank God I don’t have to make that decision.”

Verdict

The Suits pilot aired on June 23, 2011 to strong ratings, and when the series became available to watch on Netflix four years after it ended, it smashed streaming records for months on end. (Nielsen reported U.S. viewers watched 57.7 billion minutes in 2023, making it the most-viewed series on streaming that year.) It spawned two short-lived spinoffs: Suits LA (about a new group of lawyers with connections to the original characters), which was recently canceled after only one season, and Pearson (centered on Torres’ titular boss), which was similarly canceled after only 10 episodes in 2019. It may seem like it’s case closed for the Suits universe now, but the creator objects to that sentencing.

KORSH: I was very satisfied with the way Suits ended, and at some point we might do a Suits movie and that could be fun. It’s not an insane notion for us to someday do that. But I didn’t even think I could sell the [pilot], let alone have it remade in five or six languages, and now we [did] this [spinoff]. It’s crazy. Way beyond my wildest dreams.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for length and clarity. EW also reached out to Patrick J. Adams, Gina Torres, Sarah Rafferty, and Meghan Markle for inclusion in this story.

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