Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast - Tailoring "Suits" with Creator Aaron Korsh

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

This week we go back to where it all began. Patrick and Sarah share their Suits origin stories including who gave Sarah the script and what the audition process was like for Patrick. Then, Aaron Korsh, the creator of Suits, joins the chat to share what inspired him to create the show, the personal tragedy that pushed him to pursue his dream of writing, where Harvey and Donna’s names originated, which actor is least like their on-screen persona, and so much more. Email us a voice memo of your questions about Suits at [e-mail]. We may use it on the show!Follow us on Instagram & TikTok - @suitssidebarGet access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/sidebar

Hi, I'm Patrick Adams. You may know me as Mike Ross on the TV series Suits. Hi, I'm Sarah Rafferty, and you may know me as Donna Paulson on Suits. And this is Sidebar, a Suits rewatch podcast, or actually a Suits watch podcast, because Sarah and I have never actually watched the show. So each week, we're going to talk through an episode of the TV show, tell stories from set,

compare notes, memories, answer listener questions, talk about the music, talk about the clothes, talk about dazzling performances. Yes, yes, that is actually what we are going to be doing most weeks. But this week is going to be a little different. Yes, this week is going to be special. In our last two episodes, we talked about the pilot of Suits. So this week, we thought that we should talk to the creator, showrunner, and the mind behind Suits, Aaron Korsh. But I thought that before we dive into that, it might be a fun thing to just talk a bit about where we were at before we showed up on that set for the first time. September 2010, up to that point, what's Sarah Rafferty up to?

Okay so well I had been knocking around for a bit I mean at that point I was well into my 30s but at this point I had

knocked around as like a guest on all kinds of shows I recurred occasionally it was I mean it was good

it was good I was working I think that's huge for an actor to work. You knew early age you're going to be an actor. How old were you? No, it wasn't early. I don't think it was early.

I mean, sixth grade when I played Really Rosie, I should have known. I'll tell you, that's when the world knew. I should say that I left out that I had done a lot of pilots. So pilots are the first episode of something. How many pilots do you think you had? I think there were like seven, eight, nine pilots. There were some pilots. And every year, you know, we were based in New York.

And then I would come out to L.A. for pilot season, which used to be a thing. But talk about putting pressure on yourself. Like I got three months to get the job that's going to potentially change my life. Right. And they wouldn't get picked up. When Suits came along, I had just done a pilot, a comedy pilot here in Los Angeles. It was going to be a dream job. And we were waiting to hear.

And I got a phone call that it wasn't going to be picked up. But a very wise woman had told me, you know, whenever things don't go your way, just get grateful because there's meaning there. Right, right, right. So I hung up the phone. I took a deep breath, got grateful that I should live in the mystery of that. But I also had to hurry up and finish putting on my mascara because I was going to Jacinda and Gabriel's premiere of a movie at the Arclight. No way. Maybe give us a quick history.

Sorry to interrupt, but you and Gabriel are friends how? Where did you meet? Oh, okay, okay. Sorry, I just feel like that's a helpful piece of information. We met in 1993 at the Williamstown Theater Festival. We were in the Act One company, which was the young company. And I had just graduated college, and he just finished his junior year in college.

And I was getting ready to go to drama school. And we met that summer doing plays and became great friends. Do you have a foundational young Gabriel memory that I can hang above his head and make fun of him for? Anything you can give me. Oh, nothing I can. Or I can be kind. I can't offer any. I just like any ammunition.

But it can be sweet too. No, I think... Look, I'm always going to choose the... Go sweet. No, I can turn on that person who mocks. But no, I remember. So when we were at Williamstown that year, I remember we were in the theater

and there was a big first meeting. And I do remember getting tapped on my shoulder or something and turning around and gabriel just had this grin where i swear to god you could superimpose like the cheshire cat on him and did he have the long blonde locks at this point he had just shaved his head okay for anyone listening you want to go google gabriel mocked 90210. You're going to watch that video. You're at the premiere. Okay, so Justin and Gabriel did the red carpet and did their press.

I was waiting at the far end with Stephen and Suzanne, Gabriel's parents. And I greeted them when they were finished. And I was so excited to see the film. And Gabriel just said, how are you doing? And I said, great, answered. And he proceeded to ask me several times until he got the news out of me that the pilot had not been picked up. And he said, great. When I get home tonight, I'm sending you a script. You have to audition for this role. It seems really small in the script, but it's going to become something.

I know it's going to become something. So promise me you'll audition for it. And I kind of was like, whatever. I didn't take it that seriously, but he did follow up the next day. He did email it that night. And he said, get yourself an audition.

And I couldn't get an audition. They wouldn't even let you audition. I couldn't be seen in Los Angeles because it was a guest and they wanted that role to be cast out of New York. Oh, because it wasn't going to be that the role of Donna was not originally intended to be a series regular role necessarily. In the pilot, it was a guest. Yes.

Absolutely. It was a guest and I couldn't get the audition here. And so Gabriel suggested, just make your own movie of your audition, which I had never done before and didn't know was a thing. Because self-tapes weren't like a thing at that point. No. And I had to go to a place on La Brea and record it and send it in. Do you still have this tape? Please, God, tell me this tape exists. I think it would have been on VHS. Bonnie Zane, Bonnie Zane, Bonnie Zane, our casting director, who was our casting director from minute one, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Oh, she'll have

this tape. So it went to New York. And then, yeah, I mean, we can let Aaron tell the story, but they were there was sort of a rule in place that friends weren't going to be cast. Right. Which is a sort of normal rule. People say that until it's broken, but people like to sort of set that boundary. Yes. Yes. And then I remember when I got the offer for the job, I remember my manager at the time, my manager, I had two managers at the time. One of them just was like, why are you going to go do this? No, it's in New York. Like it's going to, you're going to be gone for two weeks. And I had the opportunity to say, listen, it's, you know, it's, it's not working the standard way, right? Like this, do a pilot every year, wait for something to get picked up. It's, you know, it's kind of the definition of insanity. I'm doing the same thing over and over. Something's got to change. Like, how's that working for you? It's actually not totally working. I said that, but I

said the more real truth, which was, it's a couple of weeks. My friend is starring in this thing. I just want to go there and support him and show up. I believe in just showing up. And he said, oh, okay. You want to support your friend? Go for it. Can I ask you something? Was there something about the role? Anything specific, even though it was quite small on the page in the pilot, was there something to the role that appealed that you saw something in Donna that was like, this would be fun to do?

I was intrigued by the world. And I was intrigued by Donna. I thought there was a little bit of mystery there. I was like, who is she? Is she a girl Friday? Is she like Rosalind Russell, the gal behind the guy who's going to not always be the gal behind the guy kind of sitch? But I think there was a deeper thing of like keeping myself small. Like she was going to be small.

And that made me not as nervous as we've talked about. You may have felt. I can just have fun with this. No one's looking at me. I'm just like serving a function. Donna is made to soften the edges of this guy, is made to, you know, give us information about this guy.

Donna is a functional character, like the way you analyze a play script. You understand what your function is. Not to skip or spoil alert to the end of this whole process, but I just think it's so crazy that that's the beginning of your story, given that this show basically ends with the story of you and Harvey.

You know what I mean? Like, I just think it's like the coolest trajectory that it begins from that place where you were enjoying being able to keep it small and safe. But to you, to you in terms of where you were before, and then you were the guy out front, because as I've said many times, like it's a big deal to be you and Gabriel carrying the show. It was safe for me to hang out behind the scenes over to the side, but you guys were carrying it little nervous ball of terrified young meat managed to pull this school. I thought that it was all happening. Here we go, here's my career. And then all of a sudden it stalled for years like it does. And I learned the art of easy come, easy go. Started doing a lot of guest star stuff. Managed to do a few pilots. I don't know how many I did. I think I put a lot of them out of my mind. But that process of

getting your hopes up and thinking, oh, this might be the thing, and then it really not being the thing and it being disastrous. And then I'd have to look at the timeline exactly, but I would say like six months before I received this script for what at the time was called Illegal Mind, I had been fired from a pilot. Friends with benefits. I had been cast, gone through the whole process. I did not want to be on this show. At that time, I was very uncomfortable with funny, with comedy, especially like network comedy. It was not my strong suit. I did not want to do it, but people kept telling me that I should go do it. And then I went in for this audition and the director, for whatever reason, thought I was the right guy. And I kept being like, I'm not the right guy. Really, I'm not the right guy for this. But I kept going and going and going. They got the part, long story short,

went to the table read, which in this town, they have you read this script in front of all the network executives. And there's a room full of people that are all sitting there and watching you and judging you. And it couldn't have gone worse. And at the time, that felt very personal. It turns out in the end, everyone ended up being fired off this pilot, including the writers. So it was not very funny. But to a young, insecure, nervous actor, it was me. And so that was like a real bottom of the barrel moment, obviously.

You know, already young, insecure, fearful, not sure in the same way that you described, like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Is this meant to be? Then you get fired and it's very public humiliation. You know, it's on deadline, it's written about. And so you feel like all those things you fear most about yourself, that you're not ready and that you're not good enough to do this. It's like writ large and there it was. And so fairly convinced that I was done. Not necessarily like packing my bags yet, but definitely trying to figure out what else could be the thing. Love photography. At the time I was taking headshots for people. I was like, maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just a photographer. Maybe I'll do that full time. And then a couple months later, I got the script and there was something that happened in the reading of the script and the same thing you described in the world.

And this character who was so, felt so lost, as he says in the pilot, there's a line about, I feel like I had been knocked off track. Knocked into another world. Yeah, knocked into another world. And I've just been fighting to get back. There was something that it was so relatable that all of a sudden I didn't have to like act anymore. I was just like, oh, well, I get that. Like, I don't have to pretend. I don't have to put anything on top of it. Like that level of desperation. I also believed in myself. I was like, I've worked really hard at this. And I've had all these other experiences in theater school

and in my work that have been like profoundly rewarding. And I've had a lot of people tell me like I'm meant to do this and that, you know, you got to keep fighting, keep fighting. So I had that voice in my head too. So going into this process and meeting Aaron and going into the audition, um, I just felt like calm in a way that I had not felt in normal auditions. And, and for people that aren't familiar with the business to get a show, you know, you do the first audition, then you go back and you do a, a work session with the directors and the producers. And then you go back in and you, um, you know, do another work session and then you go in for the studio and then you go in for the network. You have to do it over and over and over again. And each time it

gets increasingly more demanding and scary. And there's more people in the room that are, you know, not being particularly friendly or on their phones or ignoring you. And usually you get worse and worse in nerves. And every time I was like, cool, I get to tell more. There's the scene from the pilot where the interview scene with Harvey and Mike in it where he goes, you give me this and I'll work harder than anyone's ever worked before, basically. Like you give me this and I'll show you that I can, that I will, nobody is going to work harder than I'm going to work. And every stage of this audition process, I was like, oh, cool. There's just more people that I can tell that to. Oh, that's so beautiful. You know what I mean? Like, I was just like, oh, now I can tell it to the execs. There's nobody who's going to work harder.

I won't be the best actor. I'm not necessarily the best. I have a lot to learn, which is what I loved about Mike, right? Fish out of water. Like he's not, he doesn't know all the things. He just knows that he's going to work harder than anybody. And there was something about that, that I was like, well, I can be honest about that. And so I just flew through that process. It was like the easiest meant to be audition process. I was just not even sure that I was going to get it. Just sure that like, there was no doubt that I could be honest when I said that nobody will work harder. You want to give it to somebody else, go ahead. But I'm telling you, nobody's going to work harder than me. And so it ended up working out and I couldn't believe it. And,

you know, and then I was like the dog who caught the squirrel or whatever. I was like, oh wait, I have to do this now. But again, what a gift. The whole pilot, you know, is this character's just like, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this? You know, he's just this like little puppy in a way running around this world trying to figure out how to do it. So I could use that nervousness the the whole time but you were very your performance is so free it is so free and like innovative from moment to moment I can see the way you listen throughout the pilot I promise we're not going to do this for every episode but like blow sunshine no no no it's fine we can do this for every episode don't worry don't worry no

no no it's good hey Patrick can I share a fun fact about Aaron Korsh? I wish you would. He is the, I think he's my only friend that I can talk to on the phone for like five to six hours at a time. We did that like three months ago. It's so great when you have someone like that on the phone because when you need to get off, it's also fine. He's like, yeah, yeah, go. Oh, I know we'll do this again. Like it's like, it's like there's just a long, lifelong conversation.

And sometimes you're on the phone together and then you're off the phone. And then when you're back on the phone again, it's just five or six hours. Like he'll talk as long as you can go. You know what I loved about this interview is that you and I were here to talk about something else. And then, ta-da, Aaron just appeared out of thin air. It was one of our first days.

Yes, our amazing producers have sort of crafted this interview together because he had said he might show up, he might be able to make it. And then we started talking about, I think, another episode and then in he arrived and we just pivoted into, you know, another great conversation with the man who changed all of our lives. Yes, exactly. And it really is a great example of how once you just get started chatting with Aaron, it just takes on a life of its own. I'm really excited for the listeners to hear, get to know Aaron a little better. And hopefully it's just the beginning.

I mean, as you'll see, there's so much more that we could be talking about in this conversation. Aaron has been such a big supporter of us and our idea to do this from the very beginning. So I think we're hoping that this is just the first of many conversations with Aaron along the way. Yeah. We talked with Aaron about having a segment, right, Patrick? We had a segment where we could just call it, you know, Aaron picks a fight, pick a fight with Aaron Korsh. You had pick a fight with Aaron Korsh. I have the Korsh call.

I want to be able to make a phone call to Korsh at any moment. Now that he's busy running and creating another show, Suits LA, maybe he'll be less available on the phone, but I don't really mind bothering him while he's on set. But I would love it if our listeners want to call in with questions for Aaron, we can shoot them over to Aaron and he can send us a voice memo. Absolutely. I love that idea. We love this man. I mean, look, he changed our lives. This show is straight from his heart and his life and his experience. And, you know, it's a weird thing when you're on a television show and someone's created it, you are basically like walking around inside their brain.

You know, very few shows get to run as long as Suits did. So that means we spent, I spent seven years, you spent nine years just sort of perched up in his brain, saying the words that were coming out of there and bringing these characters to life. So it creates the kind of friendship that you rarely see or experience anywhere else, at least in my opinion. And what I love about this interview is that we get into Aaron's journey that led up to this moment in his life and how he had been on a different career path, what changed him, what moved him to become a writer. And we really dig into the pieces of this show that are autobiographical for him. And I found that all just so fascinating.

And I'm so excited for everybody to hear. Before we get into the interview, why don't we take a quick break? And when we come back, we're going to have Suits writer, showrunner, creator, and friend, Aaron Korsh. Oh, my God. I cannot believe what I just saw. Can you? Do you know what we just saw?

Couldn't be more beautifully timed. We have a bit of a surprise. What? Aaron Korsh. Guys, ladies and gentlemen, we're introducing to the studio none other than Aaron, what's your middle name? Taylor? Thomas. Thomas Korsh. I don't know if you can remember back, but we're talking about a show called Suits. Not real familiar with that. Originally it was called Illegal Mind.

That might jog your memory. But maybe a quick introduction to who you are and what you're doing here. Who are you? My name is Aaron Korsch, Aaron Thomas Korsch. I created... That's your passport number. Yes. 039... No. I created and ran the show. Brief history of me is I grew up outside of Philadelphia. And, you know, if someone has the closest to my autobiographical history in the show, it would be Mike Ross in that I was incredibly handsome. Devastatingly charming. Yeah, I mean, ridiculous, funny, athletic, all the things.

I mean, the defining characteristic I would say that I gave Mike was I had an excellent memory growing up. It was not photographic, although I am told that my grandfather could recite words from a book he had read 10 years before and kind of read it from his mind. But I didn't have that, but I wanted to. So I sort of exaggerated that in Mike Ross, but it was one of the traits I had. I always did very well in school without really working very hard. But I also somehow always felt like a little bit of a fraud. So I did go to a good college. I wasn't a fraud. I didn't not go to college. But when I got this job out of, I went to Wharton, which is the

undergraduate business school of University of Pennsylvania. So I went to Wall Street and that, I worked for a guy named Harvey. I interviewed in a hotel. Wait, his name was actually Harvey? Harvey, yeah, yeah, yeah. harvey hannerfeld we can probably put that out there there's a real donna there was a woman named donna yes in the office uh the other thing about this company we were investment bankers not lawyers which is a longer story we can get into that later but i felt like i did not belong in that world just because everybody was pretty earnest and serious. And there was a lot of rule following and I just felt silly and I never felt like I belong. So I sort of, again, externalized my inner feelings of being a fraud and made Mike an

actual fraud. Oh, the last thing I'll say is I did not get into Harvard. I wanted to go to Harvard and I didn't get in and it really pissed me off. You wanted to get it. You wanted to go for business? No, undergrad. I just wanted to go undergrad. Wharton was, I went undergrad. And I didn't get in and I was furious. And it's just a life lesson. I mean, look at, like,

I don't think Harvard would have been as meaningful in my life had I gotten in as it was by having not gotten in. But Harvard missed out on the Korsh Fieldhouse. You know, I was going to donate $400 million to Harvard this year, but I've decided not to do it. How did you decide that you wanted to leave that world and get into writing? Well, I had a roommate in college for three years, several roommates, but one guy in particular I lived with for three of the four years. And he, when we were about 25 years old, he died. It was a terrible,

he went swimming in the ocean by himself and was missing for like four or five days. And then he was dead. He drowned and it was horrible. And it really, it just shook me. I was like, I was 25 years old and it hit me that you can die. You're not guaranteed any time in life I could die. And all of a sudden I was like, I do not like my life. I do not like what I do. So it took about a year for that to resonate through with me. And I ended up just quitting and sort of traveled the world for a couple of years. I had saved money. I landed in Los Angeles and I had one friend in particular that was a very successful comedy writer at like 24 years old. He actually created the original Ellen show, the sitcom. So he was going to a table read of a pilot, right? On these sitcoms at the time. And still now they would have a table read of the pilot, which is the first episode. And they would

read the script and then they would rewrite it afterwards. And I went to that. No one knew I wasn't a writer. So I sat at the table with him and I got to watch them rewrite this thing. And I went to that. No one knew I wasn't a writer. So I sat at the table with him and I got to watch them rewrite this thing. And I was like, holy shit, this is the greatest. This is what you do for a living. And I had always been a huge fan of movies and TV. So I was like, this is what I want to do. Had you ever written anything before in your life? Not a word.

I mean, I would go out of my way not to write things. Wharton, you had to take a freshman English. Other than that, I never wanted to write a paper. Never. Nothing. Wow. Nothing. Had you read scripts?

No. Did you always, growing up, have the encyclopedic memory for movies, lines? Yes, I did. Like the dialogue. Yes. I love the dialogue. I mean, I would watch, and I still do. Like when I love something, I'll watch it 10 times, 15 times. Look, my mother, when I decided to do it, she said, look, it looks like all those years you spent watching TV were actually not a waste of time. I didn't know how to write. I had an instinctive way that I felt like

I could, but I didn't understand how to tell a story in the sense of writing a show. And I eventually got a job. These guys, I had another friend also, they gave me advice to get a job as a writer's assistant. And by watching people do this for a number of years, you can learn. And I got lucky. I got a job on Everybody Loves Raymond, but not as a writer's assistant, as a PA. And, you know, I had gone from making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to basically minimum wage getting people coffee. And it was another hit to the self-esteem, but I was there for a purpose to learn how to write. And it ended up taking eight years until I got my first job. Did you ever question the decision?

Oh, yeah. Did you actually consider going back at any point? Or once you were gone, did you know that was over? Well, in those eight years, I had gotten married before the eight years happened, but I got divorced. And I was like, here I am. I'm like, I'm not married anymore. I'm like making no money.

I don't know that I considered going back, but I considered giving up. I don't know what it would have been. And, you know, I think to make it in our business, it takes incredible perseverance. And I like to tell people like perseverance doesn't mean that you never have doubt and you never think about giving up like in my mind I gave up I think we put it Harvey says it to you I gave up about every four weeks in my mind I was like I give up but then I would just pick myself back up and do it again that scene where Mike Ross decides to come to work in the pilot. I like to call it the first totally positively masculine scene. There's the scene when Mike's got his briefcase and Harvey catches him with it

and he's giving him the monologue in the lobby saying, you know, you got to decide you want to be here. And then he shows up the next day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the first time that we see that side of Harvey that can be very mentor-like and very positively masculine. Well, I think the scene the night before, was that negatively masculine? No, no, no, no.

I'm just, I'm kind of kidding. But here we are with the Aaron picks a fight segment. F*** you! I'm sorry, we're not allowed to say that. No, well, here's the thing. The reason I say that is the scene the night before when he's like, you need to decide whether you want to be here or not. I worked for Harvey for a little bit in New York. But after that, I worked for another firm and I had another job because I hated what I did. And John Herbert took me aside and said to me, you need to decide if you want to be here or not, because basically you're acting like all these days and you need to either quit or change your attitude or we're going to fire you. And he didn't say it. He probably didn't quite say it as harshly as

Harvey does to Mike, but I view it as one of the best things anyone ever said to me. I respected John and he was right. So unlike Mike, I went home and I was like, you know what? I don't want to be here. Why am I, but not in a mad way. Like, why am I angry at these guys? It's not their fault. I hate this job. It's. I don't like this job. It requires different things of me and it made me move on. So I actually think. I love that. Yeah.

I ran into John and he was like, oh, man, do you hate me for saying that to you? I was like, of course not. What are you? It worked out. Yeah. It worked out great. Like, look, you drove me here. Yeah.

Exactly. The helicopter wouldn't have landed on the roof today. But the reason I went on that segue and thank you for indulging me in that, is just that I appreciate learning about the pieces of this that is autobiographical. When you wrote a pilot about Wall Street, you were told that you needed to turn it into a law show. So was that a change and was that hard? Well, they actually said you need to make it a procedural, which is a case of the week show. And I thought, well, the only way to do that is to make it a law show because the lawyers would be close enough to Wall Street. Well, it was a little bit of a process because when I first wrote the script, my agent at the time, Dennis Kim, who is now my manager, he sent it to a bunch of production companies and they all wanted to have a meeting with me. And I think there were like 14 of them and 11 of them were like, we love this. We can't do anything with it. What else do you have? Right. This is how it works here in the

business. I was like, oh, you love it, but you don't want to touch it. So I didn't have anything else. And then two of them said, if you make them lawyers, we can sell this. And then the third one said, which was Gene and Dave, we want to do it as a Wall Street show. So I picked the people that wanted to do what I wanted to do. And they're like, actually, we want it to be lawyers. But USA was like, it needs to be a procedure. So at that point, I was sort of prepared. Lawyers is what it has to be.

Although I think you guys know this. The night before we were supposed to pitch this thing, Dave says, you know, they could be in advertising or they could be doctors. And I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Like literally the night before. The night before, I'm like, we've been working on this thing for two months.

I'm not changing. Here's what I was wondering as I was watching the pilot and knowing that it was originally a Wall Street show was like, it's not an easy thing if you're not super familiar with the law. Same exact question. So like, you know, because I've always known this story and been like, oh, yeah, it makes sense. Lawyers have more. And in so many ways, I think you've talked to me about this, that a lot of the cases that these guys deal with a lot of times overlap with something you would have dealt

with in investment banking and in the business world. But like still, it's not an easy thing for somebody who didn't go to law school or know somebody who doesn't know a ton about the law to write a show that takes place in the law world. So how did you, was that just an easy pivot and you're like, I'll just figure it out and we'll just talk to lawyers? Well, there's a few answers to that question. I mean, part of which is, I'm really, really smart. I'm really smart. Obviously. The other thing is, I'm Jewish. So that's sort of, you're half a lawyer if you're born Jewish, because you're just arguing your whole life with everybody. No, and in particular, the first season, a lot of what they do is investment banking. And when you are an investment banker, I take an illegal studies class. You are involved with contracts. You do know a lot in particular about corporate law. And then I had always loved, I mean, LA Law was one of the shows. I read that pilot over and over again when I wrote this show as a Wall Street show. I read it. So I was steeped in what I call television law. And then my goal is to make it seem real. It doesn't have to be real.

So actually, when we would have real lawyers, sometimes on the staff, they would want it to be real. Look, to me, the other thing about the law was it's about the ethical questions that are posed to lawyers. That doesn't seem like you have to be a lawyer to do that. We just would create situations where, you know, I know what suborning perjury is, right? It means allowing someone to get up on stand and lie. Who does it? So do I. So do I. I got that. It means getting, allowing your client to get up on the stand and lie. Yeah. That's an ethical question as much as it is a legal question. So we were just constantly creating ethical questions within the confines of the fake rules of law that we would create. It was called The Legal Mind. When did you have to switch the title?

I don't remember. When I wrote it, it was called Untitled Courage Project. So I actually did not come up with any of the titles. I did not come up with The Legal Mind. That was Jackie DeCrinis at USA. And I liked it. So we made that the title. And then they decided they didn't like it. And then I believe it was Alex Sepiol that came up with the title of Suits. When we were on set of the pilot, I remember us all talking about it because we knew that the title was going to change. I don't know how we knew that, but somebody had already said. Because they told us. Yeah. They knew that this wasn't going to be the final title. So we were all like trying to come up with it on the fly.

I remember that. What was your Ross examined? Ross examined. He loves a pun. I mean, it's good. Loves a pun. It's funny because I've never been, I just try to make the show good. I'm not great with titles.

So I didn't care. That's so funny. It was your show. You didn't love Suits. You didn't love Suits at first. I did not love it at the time, but I love't care. That's so funny. It was your show. You didn't love Suits. I did not love it at the time, but I love it now. Aaron, can you tell us about how,

we talked about that shot where Mike goes into work with the bike, he's carrying the bike, and where he's standing, comes up the stairs. Can you talk about that particular location and what it meant to you? So what Sarah's talking about

is the building that we shot in, the City Corp building, when we were shooting in it, it was a real empty law offices that was beautiful, obviously, and became the basis for the set. In the offices, we were looking across the street at this building called the Lipstick Building that you could see out the windows of our offices. And that was the building that I worked in for three and a half years, my last three and a half years in New York. And you could see the floor that I used to work in sort of 20 years earlier. And we took a picture of me on the windowsill with that building in the background. And I was like, if you'd told me 20 years ago that in 20 years, you're going to be shooting a TV show in this building across the street. That's crazy.

I didn't even, I would have, you know, bet my life that you were wrong. So it was super cool. That shot was remarkable coming up from the under the Kevin must, it just did such a beautiful job. Kevin and Jim to know who was our DP on that first episode, but to transition from under a guy with a bike to up at the building, such a beautiful shot. What's interesting was, I mean, he needed a crane for it. And we had this big argument, what kind of a crane? The first of many. Yes. And it was more with Kevin and Dave Bardis, the producer, because the bigger, you know, the more expensive it is.

This is the constant, like directors think they need the most expensive crane. The biggest crane. But we were doing the shot and Kevin never actually got it the way he wanted it. I don't remember how many times we did it, but I think the shot is amazing. But Kevin's, you know, he's rightfully so a perfectionist. But it's beautiful. I'm curious what he would have wanted out of that shot.

You said something amazing yesterday about Kevin that his directing is so incredibly graceful and that there's always a Kevin special. Yes. I don't like to give Kevin compliments on places that he might. We'll cut all this out. Don't worry. He's not here to hear it.

So it's fine. Let me say he did text me. He was on a plane to London. He has an HBO deal now. And he texted me a screenshot of the Suits pilot. And he's like, we killed it last night. No way. Really?

Oh, wow. Perfect. But yeah, look, Kevin has certain shots. pilot and he's like we killed it last night no way really oh wow perfect but uh yeah look kevin has certain shots i didn't know it at the time but after watching him direct so often that you will find it in many of the things he directs and i call them kevin specials but one of them is sort of like oftentimes he likes to sort of rise up on the back of a couch and see someone's silhouette or two people's silhouettes off the back of a couch and see someone's silhouette or two people's silhouettes off the back of a couch it's always beautiful and the one shot i think you're mentioning is

the reveal of jessica in the pilot favorite shot yes you sort of see her profile where lewis walks into the office and you just have her silhouetted up yes and you're like who is this mysterious woman she's so beautiful and that shot tells a lot about like she's sitting in the power position he's coming in subservient so powerful and it was you know kevin he is like a maestro a lot of his shots you know sometimes i feel like directors they want to do cool things just for the sort of sake of doing cool things kevin's shots are they are they are graceful and he he he's like a conductor and they're it amazes me and i think what's interesting is that in i went back and i

looked at the script that you still had of a legal mind and when you talk about that scene where we're introduced to jessica and um lewis comes in it was there were more lines there was less than what we ultimately had but we but it was all communicated and i lines. There was less in what we ultimately had, but we, but it was all communicated. And I think for me, one of the things I was most excited about, we opened with, you were panning down the building into that room. And what I thought was amazing about it is that we started panning down, we go inside. Then we see Rick. And I got very excited to see my friend Rick. Yeah. And then we cut.

We're coming up like an elevator on this beautiful woman, Gina Torres, who plays Jessica. Not familiar with her. The goddess. But that shot tells us how to feel about Jessica's character.

I feel like we have to rise. We need to rise up. Yeah, that's a really good point. To be with her. We need to rise up to be with her. And I'm looking at the scene right now. Fun fact, her name was Catherine in the pilot, which I had forgotten. Because they had two shows where their leads were named. One was

Catherine, one was Kate. And they made me, they wanted to change the name. And I was like, who is going to tell my wife Catherine that we're changing the name? So that's how that happened. So you changed Kate's name to Jessica. Yes. And I also had Kate change her name. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Yes, exactly. Now we all call Kate Jessica. And I think this speaks to my, just my bigger impression of the first 30. And it's been a long time since I've watched it. And I've always heard people talk about what a great and special pilot it is. And it's been like, thank you. And yes, but I didn't understand the first 30 minutes of this. You know, these people so well. And for things like that, like that interaction between Lewis and Jessica, I like see a whole story take place.

I see how long they've been working together. It's the same thing with Donna and Harvey. I'm like, oh, these people are best friends. It's the same thing with Mike and Trevor and Jenny. You know, we found ways and I think it had a lot to do, obviously, with the quality of the script, but also Kevin bringing that is like, and just great actors who was like, how can we create as much familiarity as possible? And by the time we hit that 28 minute mark, more than any pilot I've ever watched, I'm like, I know these people, I know these people and I'm in because I know, because I totally like relate to them. I know what an old friend is like. I know what a friend

that, you know, that you don't trust as much. I know what it is to maybe be attracted to the person. Like it's all stuff you can relate that the power dynamics are so, so clear and you haven't had to spend so much time like you would in a normal pilot having to do all the plot. Right. Like you get a little bit of it. You get the Gerald Tate stuff and you get that Jessica's looking to figure out who her successor is and all that's there. But we haven't had to get into any of the case stuff yet. You are still doing plot because there's obviously plot.

You're seeing Mike with his grandmother and all those things in the LSATs and all that stuff. He's got to make some money. You're not doing exposition. It's not exposition and it isn't a case and that's you know look the first season we had to be much more case heavy because that was what they did at the time i resist that stuff because i'm more interested in the you could call a character drama it's also the soap of of a thing, the stuff of life that isn't, you know, we're not, even if you're a lawyer, when you wake up in the morning, you're usually thinking about your life. You're not thinking about the case that you happen to be working on at that time.

Right. So, yeah, I love those 28 minutes. Speaking of Jessica, before we move on from that, was Jessica ever a man? Yes. At one point, Jessica was a man and they suggested changing Jessica to a woman. And I was inexperienced. So at first I was like, oh, change, don't like change. And then I was like, it's better. And then we were having trouble casting her because I foolishly in my brain, the real way it would have worked at the time, someone at the head of this law firm would have been 60 years old. So I kept looking for a 60-year-old woman. For whatever reason, they just weren't popping. But I thought of Gina early because she was the one cast member that I really was very familiar with. I was a big fan of Firefly and I loved Gina, but I just thought she

was too young in real life to be the head of this firm. And finally, I was like, this is insane. The essence of this character is power. There is no woman or man more powerful in the world than Gina Torres. And I gave up. When I came in to do the read-throughs at one point when we were doing chemistry reads with Rachel's, I think, you were doing Jessica read-throughs the same day. And I remember I walked into the lobby where all the actors are hanging out with their paperwork. And I saw Gina Torres and the way that Mike feels about her, which is he just dodges her. Like he's so scared of her is how I felt about Gina Torres in that waiting room. I just walked in and I was like,

immediately, like, just be quiet. Don't bother her. Don't say anything. Stay away. Give her a wide berth. She couldn't have been more friendly. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no be quiet. Don't bother her. Don't say anything. Stay away. Give her a wide berth. She couldn't have been more friendly. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, no, I tell you. She just has it. I love her, and I'm still afraid of her. My lizard brain is afraid of Gina Torrance.

Then I remember, I love her. She's so awesome. She's the greatest. The nicest woman in the world. you had never made a television show before how did you know going into casting you had bonnie by your side right and gail and jayden kevin but what were you checking into that you can accredit like your understanding what was a certain actor was going to bring versus others because i'm imagining you saw pretty much everybody in town for this pilot yes i didn't know how to evaluate is this person going to long term be blah blah blah i didn't have any thought of that stuff i was like i like the way they perform these five scenes and these five scenes show some shows humor intelligence power

charisma whatever the combo was so to me and this is the way i write this is the way i produce it's like if it makes my sort of heart sing i'm drawn to it those are the people i want to go with so it's just a very like instinct instinct i'm a fan like i the actors that i love to watch over the years are the actors i love to watch over the years i can't necessarily put into words why right i will say this with Gina. Like, if I see someone in something, and it's 20 years later, and I can remember the first thing I ever saw them in,

that's an actor that I want to work with. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Also, you remember them from their auditions, and you're like, they weren't right for that part, but later, five years later, there was another part that they were right for. Which I think is also an important thing for the young people that are hopefully listening now that everything counts in that part. But later, five years later, there was another part that they were right for, which I think is also an important thing for the young people that are hopefully listening

now that everything counts. Oh, many, many times I'll go through a file in my mind and be like, remember that person that did this? We should have them for that. You know, whatever it is. Yeah. You also always would say, I don't know. I need to see it. That was the gift of the pilot. And we were just talking about it for me. My like biggest takeaway of shooting this pilot was just the feeling of like, even though we were on something that was big and there's a lot of money and there's always a lot of pressure to get it right because it's the first episode, I felt like we were all in it together.

And like the best idea always won. And if we could make you laugh, then we changed the line. And it was like... You have a distinctive laugh. I don't know if you know that. If anyone's picked up on that, yeah. I've been told. I was thinking about the pilot last night because I. I don't know if you know that. If anyone's picked up on that. I've been told. I was thinking about the pilot last night

because I knew I was going to come in here today. You know, it's an iconic thing in the pilot when you do the fake gun thing and you shoot at Harvey and then he gets out of the way. That was written differently, right? It was you singing some silly song and you were like,

how about I do this instead? I'm like, let's see it. And I was like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. It's a completely iconic moment from the pilot. I'm sure if you look at that script, it was not that, it was something different and it was better. I did go look because I love that moment so much. It's worthy of the meme that it is in the world. But knowing what you know now, would you go back and change anything in your pilot? No. Okay, amazing.

I want to talk specifically, if we can, about this episode. My favorite scene from this section, and I think it's sort of an undeniable first place, is the Mike and Harvey interview. I've heard that a big part of the reason the show took off again, second time around, is because it ended up on TikTok. Have you heard this theory? I have. Right. That people started doing this thing where they took slices of shows and they put it on TikTok and they did scenes. And that was the scene they put on TikTok that caused a lot of young people to go, what is this show? And I guess there's some clear pattern from the day that got put on TikTok to the day that people started watching it on

Netflix. It happened almost right away. And we have such a younger audience this time around than I think we even did the first time around. Yes, yes. Like there are young people coming to the show potentially as a result of that. And I think maybe a lot to do with that scene specifically. And for me, it has a special place in my heart.

It was the audition scene, you know, so we did it, you know, hundreds of yes in front of people um and it was i don't know that was the most special rewatch for me in this first 30 pages for sure and it had some of my favorite lines in it which is the the one about getting knocked into another life which also was a great cut you know we cut to like an off-angle shot of you in the middle of that line which i remember that's kevin Robert. The blocking too, brilliant. I love how we switch seats. I couldn't figure, I haven't gone through the script specifically on this one, if that

was written, but the blocking of changing into his chair. And so it becomes this, like the job interview that switches and it's like, we're, we're suddenly equal in a weird way. You know, there was something that Kevin did there that was pretty brilliant. But there was something that Patrick J. Adams did that was really brilliant to that moment when you reveal that you're playing hearts. And you say,

you say my favorite part of that. I love that. But I feel like I was really aware of the places where you were making choices that were so specific to only you would make that choice in that every line can be delivered a million ways but the sort of kindness and gentleness and and and like non-cockiness of like if you're gonna try to beat me at something you're gonna have to pick something else like this is gonna be hard on you it's my canadian-ness like i'm so sorry i'm just really good i have empathy for you like

this is gonna be hard and i'm just putting down the laptop. Which makes it even cockier in a weird way. Well, I didn't experience like it was that, but it was so winning that I've always said that Gabriel is incredibly transformed as Harvey. We're all very,

very transformed. I think Mike is very much a version, especially of who I was at that time. Like, there's differences, but Gabriel is playing a different person. That is not, I mean, again, there's differences, but Gabriel was playing a different person.

That is not... I mean, again, there's always similarities, but for me, I would say it was not a huge transformation. I would say I was pretty similar to who this kid was. I mean, I think Gabriel, Rick, and I have really big differences. Right. Very, very different. From our characters.

You do in a lot of ways, but in terms of just your sort of day-to-day affect swagger gabriel is the one that is nothing like his character everybody else has if there's a venn diagram of who you are in your way versus your character gabriel's is the one that has the least overlap yeah yeah i think i became a little bit more like donna as i aged into her i think she taught me a few things, but we'll get into that later. But yes, so Gabriel was the most transformed. Because he's a Grateful Dead hippie. He's goofy. I say he's goofy.

He's a goofy hippie who wants to go watch Grateful Dead shows and have a blast. And then he's suddenly Harvey Specter. And he looks and you're like, yes, that's Harvey Specter. Yes, yes. Well, I told you my first day on set, what I remember was walking down the street to go to our trailers and somebody was shouting at me and it was New York and I was a New Yorker. And so I just like tucked my chin and buckled down and walked a little faster. Like I didn't look right. And then that person was relentless.

And I sort of looked peripherally very quickly and moved on. And then the last, the third shout, I turn and it's Gabriel. And I didn't recognize him. And I had known him, as we spoke about, since 1993. So I was like, what is going on?

Who is this guy? Who are you? And that was a moment where I was like, oh, I was right to fight with my manager. Like, this is special. I knew when I read the script.

And now that I'm walking down the street in New York City and I'm looking at my old friend, there's some fairy dust sprinkled here. It's a testament to how good he is, too, though. Because if you put certain actors in a version that is not themselves, it doesn't work that well that quickly, too. It could take a long time before you figure out how to embody that. And with him, he could just do it day one. He has the gifts of some of the great character actors, but in the body of him with his type. So very early on as we enter, I talked about the first visually what Kevin was creating and how we get introduced to Rick, how we meet Jessica. And then we go right into kind of the, sorry, you're going to pick a fight with me, but hyper masculine world.

Okay. We go into the poker game. We start to learn what we're into. We do that. And then Harvey has to leave and come back. Jessica texts him. He's got to come back to deal with Gerald. And at the three minutes and 40 seconds, somebody talks about balls.

So I appreciated that right away. They go right into the balls. But there's, at the end, the joke about the fire drill, right? That was Kramer. I think that was Kramer. No, I put the fire drill in. He added another joke think that was kramer no i put the fire drill and he added another joke on top of that i will say that yeah it's a very serious scene and then in true suits fashion erin course fashion we get that nice button of the joke about the blue team

captain and you start to immediately understand jessica and harvey relationship, but also Gabriel smiles exactly that way that I met him, that like Cheshire Cat thing. So charming. Yeah, and I was like, ah! Mischievous. Boom, nobody else can play Harvey Specter. Yeah. Right there.

Why does a guy who doesn't ever carry paperwork with him anywhere, why is he holding on to the fire drill memo in his suit? Not a single scene in Suits history does this man have a piece of paperwork. You're wrong. You're wrong. Every scene we ever shot, he's got that same fire drill memo inside of his pocket. He uses it for every, anytime he needs a memo.

Exactly. If he needs to bluff someone. It's actually a memo from like 12 years ago. 12 years ago. Blue team captain. Oh my God. I got a weirdest scene. You got a weirdest scene?

The weirdest scene. The scene with Lisa in bed the next morning. Okay, that transition. You transition from do you want to eat breakfast off my stomach to Grammy. Same scene. We went from one exact scene. You transition actually not from her stomach, from a different part of her body to Grammy's face.

Oh, yeah. You linger on that scene, too. I linger. Okay. What were you going to say? I don't want to jump ahead to the next part, but the scraping scene where the guy's scraping the stuff off the window. That's my favorite scene.

In the writing of it, I loved that. His audition, I loved it. I haven't had a good time since 2004. I'm like, what? He was local New York and he was so good. What's interesting is that when you look at the script, we started in Mike's world. But when we look at the pilot,

we started in Harvey's world or in the world of Pearson Hardman. And you were saying that that was sort of an organic choice, that you've always been kind of open to where scenes are going to go in many ways? Yeah, so I don't remember. I believe that that change was made before I saw the cut. Like we were saying, when you shoot this pilot,

the editor edits it, and they usually edit it, put together an assembly, which is in the order that the script is. But then after that assembly, they might change some things to present to the director, and then the director gets their cut, and the director will delete some scenes, move some scenes around. They'll do whatever they're going to do. So I don't think I made that change. I think that change was just in it when I watched it. But the question would be, do you show the guy that's the fish out of water that's going to get thrown into it? Or do you show the water that the fish is going to come into? And I don't know that I consciously thought that at the time, but they must have made that determination that it's better this way.

And I just remember watching it going, this is working. I just thought it was so interesting that, you know, you're not actually white knuckling with the first shot is you're going to, you're going to shoot the thing and then you're going to kind of be open to figuring out what reveals itself to you. Early on, sometimes we would wrench about what order the scenes should go that are in two different storylines, right? Like if you're in a Harvey story or Mike story, should it be a Harvey and then a Harvey or a Harvey-Mike and then Harvey? And once I realized pretty early on, once I started editing, that I was like, we don't need to talk about it at all when we're writing the script. Because the fact is, these are all decisions you're going to make in the edit bay anyway. So why spend hours talking about it in the writer's room?

Yes, yes. And that was something I learned as we went. So interesting. Let's talk about the weed for a bit. We've been doing the math on this weed. Because there's a lot of money. Listen, it was going to be, first of all, I love that Mike is told by a very aggressive doctor, like just in the hallway, you're going to have to give me 25 K. Like I have questions about that doctor. There's no payment plan. We're not me 25K. Like I have questions about that doctor.

There's no payment plan. We're not, I had no follow-up questions. The doctor's just like, straight up, give me, give me 25K. And I was like, okay, okay, great. And then lo and behold, the next scene is I'm going to give you a 25K to move this pot. Great. All right. I'm going to move it in order to, I think we did the math on the weed in order. Well, I found the average price of an ounce of weed in New York City in 2011. And it says it was about $100 an ounce. Right. Yes. I would have to be holding like 16 pounds of weed in my briefcase.

Just to cover the 25K. Right. Is that not possible? No, 15 pounds. We did a Google search of what 15 pounds of weed looks like. It's a lot. It takes up most of the middle of this table. Because I think we had this conversation during the

pilot and we all argued about it and Aaron was like, I do not care. It does not matter to me. And it's true because it does not matter at all. I was intrigued when I was watching it, how much of it we made up there of Donna's stuff. Because there wasn't even a line there when he said, do I look

like a pimp? And I was like, pimp? That wasn't there. And I was like, yeah, a little bit. And I remember. The pimp line wasn't there or the yeah. The pimp was there. But I didn't have a response. And I remember being scared to ask if I could speak.

Right, right. Who did you ask me? I probably asked Kevin. I probably asked Kevin. I probably asked Kevin. What did he say? Because I actually didn't know any of you. Yeah, no, none of us knew anybody. I may not have known that you were the writer guy when I was there.

Well, here's the funny thing is I was scared during that. We were all scared. I was a low, I had been an assistant for eight years. So in my head, I'm still assistant. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. And then I had been staffed as a writer for a couple of years, but there's a hierarchy of writers and I was the bottom level. And still sometimes in my head, no one wants to hear what I have to say and I'm just an assistant. And I think that sometimes- And that's the end of the show. Thank you so much. Sometimes that's why I sometimes overreact to someone disagreeing with what I'm saying is because I'm feeling like they think I'm unimportant. And I'm like, no, you're going to listen to what I have to say.

And then I realized, wait a minute, they're going to listen. Sounds like marriage. Did you guys catch the weirdness of Harvey hitting? There's this moment where he's, Lisa comes over, waitress comes over to check on them to have a little flirt. And then there's like a moment in the middle of it

where Harvey like glances over at Jessica as if to say like, is it cool if I do my thing here? And Jessica gives him a little like, tip of the hat, like go for it. And then he makes the move. It's just a ton of questions out of that interaction it was very like he just full-on hauls off to hit on this girl this

waitress but jessica giving him the go ahead i actually thought they were more jessica and harvey were a little flirty with each other in that yeah in that scene yeah yeah and um that's something we could have explored we never did i love this scene later in the second half when she's getting ready to go out. Categorically stunning. Yes, yes. Categorically stunning. Yes, yes, yes. And I think that was our first introduction into where the fashion was going to go.

Oh, when she looked like a million, zillion dollars. Yeah. You think you're the only one who can close a client, I believe is what she says to him. Wow. That is it. See, photographic memory. We have a particular category that I like to talk about, which is going to be called Statue of Limitations, which is things that have aged not so well.

Of which I'm curious if you have any things that you think of. Gerald Tate says something about pansy-ass attitude. Yeah. Which I was like, I don't know if in 2024, we're, oh, do we do that? I don't know. but even at the time of that, we're supposed to think

Gerald Tate is an asshole. So, so. It works. I don't know that that would age out, but look, over the course of the series, there are some things.

I'm not going to reveal them, but there are some things. Oh, we'll find them. Listen, listen. And look, this is a nice opportunity

for me to say something about what was said before, which was like when I kind of made the sort of soft joke of hyper-masculine world. It truly is supposed to be a hyper-masculine world in a time that's different than the time we're living in now. Like that particular world of that poker game where the guy says, when are you going to work for a man? You. Stop working for a woman. That kind of thing. I think that was being set up on purpose to understand the world we were in.

Right. I thought they cut that, by the way. So that never aired that line. It's in the Netflix cut. Oh, it's in the Netflix cut. Oh, it was not. I liked it in there. I liked calling attention to it.

No, what I liked about it was is that Harvey doesn't care that he works for a woman. Harvey is, look, what Harvey says to Gerald Tate and what Harvey feels is, I'm comfortable with who I am as a man. So that when you say these things that are supposed to be insults to me, I don't feel insulted. He says, Gerald Tate, I'm comfortable enough with my manhood. And he doesn't care that he works for a woman. So to me, I don't think those things would be out of place right now because there are still men that have the how the character reacts in the face of that. I'll give it a little context.

When back at the time, USA was not sure if their pilots were going to get picked up to series. So you had to write a 90-page script that was in case it didn't get picked up to series, they would air it as a movie overseas and it would be much longer that's why they were 90 that's why they were 90 pages so yes so we had to have a longer version

and a shorter version the shorter version would be that's how they like recouped their losses if a show didn't go exactly exactly god so but even the if it did go, it would air as an hour and a half with commercials. Yeah, yeah. As opposed to most shows are an hour with commercials. So anyway, that's sort of how we can cut them. So weird that they decided. Did you have any decision in whether it gets put back into a Netflix cut? There was some weird version that was like a middle length cut.

I don't remember what it was for. I think maybe. I don't remember what it was for. I think maybe, I don't know, but I had no idea that Netflix was going to air a different version than we had aired. Like to me, it's not the right version. No one asked me. I didn't even know till people started saying, why is Victor Garber in the thing? He's obviously a great actor, let me say, and the scenes were great and he would have been great, but it didn't work for the pilot at the time. And if you ask me, I like to

have, I'm an originalist, like I don't like that they added that scene back to Star Wars. It's just not there. Yeah, with Jabba the Hutt it was like, that wasn't in the original. Why are we doing that? So I would leave it the way it was. But it's interesting, yesterday you said the thing like when the food's out of the kitchen,

it's Sarah was asking me yesterday if it bothered me. I was like, it does bother me, but I'm like, I made the pilot. I'm happy with the pilot that I made. If somebody is watching a slightly different version and they still love it, I'm not going to like lose sleep over it.

And then when you jump into your giant swimming pool of money and go swimming, it's like, it's like hundreds of them. It's just like, it's just a couple of choppers, and go swimming. No, but it's not about that, actually. It's like hundreds of millions. It's just a couple choppers. I can't hear any of it from my helicopter. We are definitely giving the wrong impression of Hollywood. I think it's weird to not consult the creator.

Best needle drop is another thing we're talking about. One of the things we have is fashion police, which is really just an opportunity to talk about the fashion, which I've learned is the thing we can't really talk about in the pilot because nobody's particularly fashionable is what I've heard. No. And what's interesting is I loved the, I think the first thing you see me in is this green dress that's belted. And I remember that was club Monaco,

which is the beginning of that scene. You're also saying something about the belt. Like the beginning, you're standing there talking to the belt? I'm talking about clothes. Like the beginning, you're standing there talking to the woman about it. I didn't think that would ever, I didn't even think that would you be able to tell.

Oh, it's great. It's great. I love it. But I was just placed with her. I mean, we were there for four seconds before action and I just was like, oh, it has like a cute little thing

that you can cinch if you, like we must have been talking about outfits. I suddenly. I just remembered your, the line like after that, you want me to show you how to wipe your ass i i i don't know what made me think of that but when you get that scene in the script i was not in that scene i was on the intercom so on the day it changed and i was there and i do remember the moment like it was my

impression this probably wasn't real but it was my impression that ke probably wasn't real, but it was my impression that Kevin Bray and Gabriel separately were kind of like boosting me forward a little bit, like taking me out of the wings and But I remember saying, maybe I give him the card because I'm the one who has like all your stuff, who does all this for you. Like you're above having the card. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Gabriel was also helpful in developing the character of Donna and who Donna was.

Well, he also just never wanted to hold anything. So a lot of our characters are just based on Harvey never wanting to have a briefcase like that was me it was like well Patrick has to hold it because I'm not holding it

so Mike always had to have the paperwork because Gabriel was just like I'm not I don't carry things which works look I want to be

mindful of time because we could do this forever so I thought maybe a good way to close is just to say first of all thank you so much for coming today.

Thank you for having me. It's so helpful not only to have you here but to just have you be a champion of us doing this ever since we called you and told you that we wanted to do this. You've been so supportive and so excited for us to do it. I actually, this is awkward.

He's changed his mind. I came here to serve you guys with papers and I want you to see some of this. This is bulls**t. This is garbage. I was going to see, I was going is bullshit. This is garbage. I was going to see how it was going to go. And this is

the thanks I get. But just to echo what you were saying too is you've been so generous to say that you are willing to come back and maybe send us some voice memos

or let us have the course call or email us back when we have a question in the future so that we're going to have your point of view as a bit of a touchstone throughout the whole thing

which I think will be really special. For which you will be paid zero dollars. I'm going to pay you in hugs. But in closing, I guess before we sign off here, you know, are there any things that you would say to us as we head down this path? Because you have rewatched the show a lot and anything that you would hope for us in the process of rewatching this i think you both know that we're people that have sort of avoided watching this show for multiple reasons hard to watch ourselves hard to go down that path so you know anything you want to say to us as we begin this this process of looking back well i mean first of all i hope i hope you guys love it. I mean, I really hope you can, with distance, appreciate the work that you did. It was amazing. And this is, even if you hadn't done this, I was like, I hope that someday you can each watch it with your children and they can appreciate what you did and you can appreciate what you did. That's really what I hope for you. I don't give a shit about this podcast, really. I love it.

I love that this exists. I love that you're doing it. And as much as I can be a part of it, I would love to be. And I hope you bring in everybody. And it's awesome. Cool. Thanks for changing my life, Aaron Korsh. Thanks, Aaron Korsh.

You guys did the same for me. We appreciate it. Thank you. I'm so excited to keep talking to Aaron as we go through this series, but that's all we have for this week. Next week, we're going to be breaking down episode two of Suits, Errors and Omissions. In the meantime, please reach out with any questions or thoughts to sidebarpodcastatseriousxm.com. We can't wait to hear from you. See you next week. Our audio mix is by Eduardo Perez. Our music is by Brendan Burns and our executive producers are Cody Fisher and Colin Anderson.