‘Suits’ Postmortem: Paul Schulze on Gallo’s Fights With Mike and Harvey

Paul Schulze as Frank Gallo in ‘Suits’ (USA)

Warning: This interview about the “Accounts Payable” episode of Suits contains spoilers.

Even though, as a seasoned TV viewer, you knew there’s no way producers would seriously injure Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) in episode 2 of the season, you had to be worried when he was cornered by a shiv-wielding Frank Gallo (Paul Schulze) and a couple of his buddies. “I haven’t seen it yet,” Schulze told Yahoo TV earlier this week, “but what’s important is trying to be honest in the action. Gallo was certainly wanting Mike to believe that he was in mortal danger. Our attempt was to create tension and a sense of danger. Maybe we achieved that.”

An earlier altercation between the inmates had cost Mike his visitation rights for the immediate future (sorry, Rachel), so Harvey, his approved legal counsel, went to to see Mike to find out what had happened. Gallo then escalated his harassment of Mike after Harvey took the bait, had a heated conversation with Gallo through a prison yard fence, and tried intimidating him into backing off or else.

“There’s definitely an old fashion power play, and the fact that there is a tension between us,” Schulze says of the showdown between Harvey and Gallo. “[Being separated by a fence] is frustrating if you’re trying to get your hands around someone’s throat, but it’s also helpful if you’re just threatening to get your hands around someone’s throat. The fact that the fence was there was a huge part of the scene, and we both enjoyed working with it, whether we were trying to smack the fence as if it wasn’t there and his face would have been smacked, or him actually grabbing my finger though it. I think it added to the scene, definitely.”

Going into the show, Schulze wasn’t told the full arc of the character. “It was more that I had a past with Harvey and I’m going to try to leverage my proximity to Mike to my favor and that I am a pretty dangerous guy,” he says. “My relationship with Harvey is also kind of interesting. While I’m wrathful, I’m also a little bit disarmed by Harvey, so we toyed with that a little bit: He won the first round, certainly, so it’s kind of like, if somebody punches you real hard, it pisses you off but you’re also a little afraid of getting punched again.”

Though Harvey is hoping to call in a favor from Sean Cahill (Neal McDonough) to help get Gallo moved to another prison, Schulze assures us we haven’t seen the last of the Harvey-Gallo fireworks.

“He definitely has more of a relationship with Harvey,” he says. “I think Gallo, like most criminals, tends to blame others quicker than himself for his plight. I’ve heard people say, ‘I’ve caught a case,’ and I’ve always ‘thought], ‘You said it like you caught a cold. You caught a case means someone caught you doing something.’ The fact that Harvey helped to put him in prison… he’s a big card in the deck of Gallo’s life, and yeah, there’s definitely more to be had between the two of them.”

But what about Mike? Mike didn’t rat on Gallo to a guard when he had the chance (well done running to get him, real cellmate Kevin Miller, played by Erik Palladino). Is there a chance Gallo gained any respect for Mike for that smart play? “I think Gallo is certainly impressed by Mike’s ability to handle himself, whether it’s physically or the choices that he makes,” Schulze says. “I think Gallo’s constantly sizing up Mike and sizing up everyone else around him, just like guys would do when they’re in a situation like that, surrounded with lots of other men in institutions like that. It must be exhausting. I’m glad I never had to deal with it for real.”

Suits airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on USA.