‘Suits’ Season 6 Premiere Postmortem: Patrick J. Adams and Creator Aaron Korsh on That Twist and What’s Next

Patrick J. Adams as Mike Ross in ‘Suits’ (Ian Watson/USA Network)

Warning: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 6 premiere of Suits, “To Trouble.”

Okay, so Mike’s first night in prison did not go according to plan. But while he was busy telling his story to a man who turned out to be posing as his caring new cellmate to kickstart a revenge plan against Harvey, who’d put the guy away, Harvey, Jessica, and Louis smoked a peace pipe.

We talked to Patrick J. Adams and creator Aaron Korsh separately about the big prison twist, Louis’s hilarious weed-induced reveal, and what lies ahead.

We’re watching the hour thinking Mike’s “roommate” Frank Gallo (Paul Schulze), if that’s his real name, is too good to be true, and yet, we totally want to believe Mike would find a friend. Did you know that twist before you read the script, Patrick, or did it get you, too?
Patrick J. Adams: No, I was really lucky to just get to experience the script the way audiences will experience the [episode]. In fact, I remember I was a little bitter: I was like, “What? Why is he getting along with this guy so quick? This isn’t prison.” I was reading it going, “Mike needs someone in there who’s going to be really dangerous and really aggressive and come after him. Why is his roommate being so nice?” Then we got to the end of the script and I saw that, of course, I walked right into what they wanted me to walk into. I was really happy and totally surprised by it. It definitely made me excited to see how the episodes to follow would play out.

Aaron Korsh: I will tell you we thought about making Frank not his real name, but we thought, “All right, that’s enough…” I knew that we wanted Mike to have [an adversary] in prison, and one of the writers came up with the idea that he was in prison with someone that Harvey put away. That’s sort of what connected that whole thing: When Mike’s in the cell, he’s going to connect with this guy. It allowed us to have that play inside the prison. Obviously Gallo’s an intelligent person. He’s somewhat sinister because he’s got a long, simmering grudge against Harvey. He’s corrupt. He is not a nice guy. We will learn more about him and what he’s doing in there, and what Harvey’s history is from him.

Adams: He’s a really interesting character for the show because he can take it to a place that no other character’s really taken it before. I mean, we’ve had violence on the show: We’ve had Harvey punch about 15 people in a bathroom at some point, and we’ve had people throw punches and take hits in the stomach. But we’ve never had a character who is really determined to do serious physical harm to somebody, and a character who has a seriously dangerous past. The more that we learn about Gallo, we’re going to learn that he’s not your typical Suits villain. He’s somebody who can do way more physical damage and plans to do way more physical damage than anyone we’ve really had on the show before. It really ups the stakes, and it gives Mike and Harvey something to fight against and a good reason to do everything in their power to get Mike out of prison before it’s too late.

Erik Palladino will play Mike’s real roommate, Kevin Miller, who we’ll meet in the next episode. I imagine it will be difficult for Mike to trust him now.
Korsh: You’re exactly right. I mean, how can you trust someone that would let someone do that to you? Their relationship develops over time, and it turns out Frank Gallo was much more powerful within the prison than Erik Palladino’s character is. He didn’t necessarily have a choice in letting Gallo in there.

Adams: I think the guy that Frank Gallo is pretending to be in this first episode ends up being the guy that Kevin Miller actually is. He’s not a guy without a past who hasn’t made some mistakes. I think the writers have done an excellent job of unfolding his story slowly over the course of the season. Ultimately he’s a guy that is good, and I think Mike recognizes that early on and knows that this is a guy like Mike, who’s heart is in the right place. He’s just trying to do what he knows to be right in difficult circumstances. Their relationship and how Mike is forced to make some difficult decisions in regards to their relationship is really, I think, the central drama for Mike in these first 10 episodes. We’re so lucky to have Erik. I can’t say enough about him. He’s just a really good actor and he’s bringing so much to this part. I’m really excited for the audience to see this relationship.

How will Mike spend his time in prison: Will he work out, read books, watch those movies Gallo mentioned?
Adams: We hit the ground running, because there’s this immediate threat and because it’s a television show where you probably don’t want to watch Mike just reading books in the corner all day. A lot of what we’re seeing Mike do is run back and forth through the prison trying to keep himself safe, trying to set the pieces up on the board properly so that they can negotiate his way out of there. Other than that, there’s down time. We haven’t done any working out. That seems to be more Kevin’s thing. He’s doing a little bit of reading. He gets a job. I can probably say that much. It’s not much of a spoiler. He gets a job in the hospital, working in the prison to try and keep himself busy.

Adams and Gabriel Macht, as Harvey Specter, in the July 20 episode, “Accounts Payable” (Shane Mahood/USA Network)

What is Mike’s dynamic with Harvey like now?
Adams: It’s a fun dynamic this year because as the problem and the core conflict of the season comes into focus, you have these two characters who are still working together, but they’re really not able to work together. I mean, there’s really only one room where they can be together, which is this little visitation room in the prison. They’re going to have to meet there, make their game plan, and then go their separate ways and carry out what part of the game plan they can: Harvey is trying to deal with the problem from the outside, while Mike is on the inside trying to negotiate and navigate the problem in there. They’re both coming at it from completely different directions. There’s obviously going to be a lot of miscommunication, and both Harvey and Mike are renegades in a sense and make some impulsive decisions in the moment that can come back to bite them both. There’s still a lot of love there, but there’s a lot of conflict and a lot of trying to figure out the same problem but from two totally different sides.

Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane (Ian Watson/USA Network)

In the premiere, Rachel (Meghan Markle) is told that it’s going to take like a month for her to be approved to see Mike. What can you tease about what’s ahead for Mike and Rachel?
Adams: Yeah, they are kept apart for a good portion of time. I know it’s a frustrating thing for fans of the show to imagine that relationship not being revisited, but I think in this case, it’s an opportunity for Rachel to begin her career as a lawyer, and it’s a nice change of pace for that character to have a storyline. Mike is always present for her emotionally, and that’s a real thing that she has to deal with, but in the long run, she gets to be at school, she gets to take on a very important case for the season. You get to see her separate from just Mike’s problems, which I think is great for fans of the show and for fans of Rachel. We get to spend some quality time building up the suspense of wanting to get these people back together. The audience, I think, gets to have a moment where they really fight for Mike getting out so that they can be reunited.

Patrick, how sad were you not to be there for Louis (Rick Hoffman) recounting his inappropriate mudding experience?
Adams: [Laughs] The fact that there’s a Louis scene where he’s getting high and the character who smokes the most pot on the show doesn’t get to be there? That’s sad. That’s not fair.

What’s the origin of the peace pipe scene, Aaron?
Korsh: Oh boy. I am not 100% sure I remember. We had wanted to get Louis to get high last year with Donna… I think it was always in the concept of the episode, like if they’re going to be there, they’ve got to get high. We thought that was great. Rick Muirragui and Genevieve Sparling helped me write that scene. It was just a collective effort on our part of coming up with ridiculous things to say and think that Louis did. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had writing a scene.

When we talk about character-based humor, to me, you believe that Louis would talk to his dead secretary, Norma, right? You just believe that. It’s Louis. It just kind of worked with the ashes in her ashes, and how were we going to get him to agree to smoke pot? Then we laid in that Louis muds over the years. Even [the paralegal] Missy — if you watch episodes of Suits, Missy has been spoken about in more than one episode. So we decided to use her name just to bring that back.

Are there any plans to meet Missy?
Korsh: I mean, I think she’s gone, right? She’s gone. Maybe we will meet her. That’s not a bad idea… I can’t tell you how many different ways there were to go with that scene, that were all funny in terms of their performances, because sometimes they got mad, sometimes they didn’t. We actually had to cut a line. When Harvey says, "I’m going to ask you a question. I want you to tell me the truth,” Louis said, “I don’t want to be here anymore,” and it was so funny on its own, but the scene was long in its totality. It was just a lot of fun.

Macht, with Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt and Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson (Ian Watson/USA Network)

This was an important episode for Louis and Harvey in terms of taking responsibility for things.
Korsh: Absolutely. They needed to do those things and have those revelations to heal each other. Louis comes clean about what he did, that he recorded Harvey, and finally, Harvey said he’d never apologized for bringing Mike in there. He does, and that was a very important moment to me in 601. It turns out, moving forward, he’s not quite done paying for this thing he’s done yet. He’s going to pay a little more in 602.

What’s next for the folks at the firm now that they’ve decided they can settle the class action against them? Is the season about them basically being a startup?
Korsh: Deciding you have a plan on how to do it and doing it are not the same thing. Obviously it’s not going to go exactly as planned, so Episode 2 is trying to put that stuff behind them, then trying to let them move forward, yes. I mean, startup isn’t exactly right because they do still have clients. They’re sort of a wounded firm. It has a significant hobble maybe.

Will we continue to see more of Benjamin, the IT guy (David Reale)?
Korsh: You know what’s terrible is we have not worked him in again. By the way, he was initially thought of as like a one-off character. We never knew if we were going to see him again. The actor himself is sort of just a beloved member of the Suits family. He often comes in and reads guest-star parts at the table read for us. He’s just so good that every once in a while we’re like, “Why don’t we bring Benjamin in?” But as of yet, we have not met him again. Maybe we will.

Bringing it back to Mike, someone we will be seeing again is his prison counselor, played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner. What do you hope he adds to the story, Aaron?
Korsh: We just thought it was interesting to have someone that has a little bit of an outside perspective on most of the criminals that are in that place. We know Mike as a person. We get to see the full picture of Mike. But if you’re a counselor in a white collar prison, and someone comes in there, the fact of the matter is they’ve committed a crime. You can strip everything else away. You can think that you’re a good person, and you may be a good person, but you committed this crime. It’s something that you need to take ownership of and you need to sort of come to terms with because the outside world is going to see you that way. You better understand that. I think Mike’s relationship with the counselor is sort of a push and pull, and yeah, the guy isn’t there to be his friend. He’s there to honestly, in my opinion, try to help him turn himself around.

Patrick, you sound really happy with what, essentially, is a reboot of the show.
Adams: Yeah, I feel really lucky as an actor, because I think you hit the sixth season of a show and you’re always looking for new things to do and new ways to do it. It’s a real gift as an actor at this point in this series to just be handed a brand new world of new characters. I mean, I think it’s hard for me to not be integrated into the fabric of the show that we used to know. I don’t get scenes with all the people that I love and have worked with for the past few years. But again, for me, that gives me the ability to go to work and feel like I’m doing something brand new. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m really proud of what we’ve managed to come up with in there.

I know for fans, it’s going to be everybody wishing we had come up with some solution to get me out of prison right away. People want the show to be the same show that they’ve been watching forever. I think if fans stick it out with us they’re going to realize that the heart and soul of Suits is still very much there. In fact, when everything is going wrong [for the characters] is when you get to see your characters at their very best.

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