'Suits' Postmortem: Creator Talks That Reunion and What's Next
Warning: This interview about the “Blowback” episode of Suits contains spoilers.
Suits is back, and while all is far from right in the world of Mike Ross and Harvey Specter, there is something to cheer about: Donna is back working for Harvey. We talked to creator Aaron Korsh about key scenes in Season 5′s winter return, and what to expect next.
Let’s start with Louis “firing” Donna so she can go back to work for Harvey as he mounts Mike’s defense. How did you decide that this was the moment when you were going to be able to reunite Harvey and Donna, and also have Louis make that sacrifice? We know how much he loves Donna.
It’s funny, after we’d written and shot all these things, I had some Twitter exchange with some woman that thinks Louis is horrible. I don’t think Louis is horrible. I think Louis is a human being that has lovable sides and not lovable sides. I was glad we had already written [this episode] before that exchange. He’s very protective of Donna — that’s why he doesn’t want her getting too involved with Mike[’s defense], because he knows what can happen. In the end, he realizes Donna’s loyalty to Harvey and Mike is not going to be denied. He can’t protect her, so he very generously says, “You might as well be 100% with them if you’re going to help them.” It was just the way to show a real positive side to Louis.
When Gene Klein, one of the executive producers, saw [this episode], his first thought was, you know what’s the only scene a huge chunk of our audience is going to be talking about? It’s the scene where Donna tells Harvey she’s coming back to him. It’s a great scene. They just did a great job of that. It’s a very tender, intimate scene with them. Just the pictures that were released, I got a bunch of “thank you” tweets.
Also, don’t forget Louis is aware that there’s a risk to her doing this. The truth is, there might’ve been a risk to her even if she didn’t do it. As we’ll see in coming episodes, even after they’re together, it’s in a high stress environment. There’s going to be tension put on the relationship in spite of them being back together. I think it was a good development for them. I was happy to have it happen.
Next week’s episode is a great one for Donna (Sarah Rafferty).
In the course of Donna working on Mike’s case, we come to meet her father and learn a bit more about her backstory — her backstory with Harvey and her backstory with her family. I would even say this, we get a tiny glimpse into how early it was that Donna’s intuitive ability to know when people are telling the truth [emerged]. We get a glimpse into the start of her musical theater love.
We also need to address Louis’s mudding scene. I love that line when Jessica says that Louis is not self-aware, but when you hold up the mirror to him, he’s not afraid to look at it. It’s a nice trait to give that character and have acknowledged. How do you decide when it’s time to dip back into the mudding well?
We just wanted to have Jessica acknowledge that she was wrong about Louis. In my mind, Robert Zane got in her head when he said the night before, “People are going to come at you from places you couldn’t even think of.” When Louis said, “Let me take over” to put Jack at bay, she’s paranoid about it and she jumps down his throat. He realized, you know what? I was being selfish in a different way with Donna. That’s when he let Donna go. She hears about what he did with Donna, and it’s just a great way to have a real reconciliation between the two of them. She knows that’s where he goes [mudding].
Her expression of him being not self-aware but not afraid to look is sort of how I think of Louis. That’s where that came from. It was just a nice, tender scene. Sometimes I like to give each of the characters traits of mine. I have read the Lord of the Rings trilogy four times. I had Jessica read it four times. It was just a fun scene. I think we’ve done the joke — “Did you really mean that?” “No” — between Jessica and Louis a lot. It’s their dynamic. It’s just what they do. That was another aspect of that scene I liked: at the end, he sort of shakes his head like, yeah I know. I know she’s never going to do it.
On to Mike. Robert Zane’s entrance made me gasp. I did not expect to see him behind that door at the police station. Are we going to see more of him in these back six episodes?
We will see him more. First of all, I love Wendell Pierce. I love him as an actor. I love him as a person. This year is the first time I ever met him. It turns out he was on a book tour throughout the country for his new book. My parents always go to this library lecture series in Philadelphia. It turns out my dad was teaching that night, so my mom met Wendell. My parents came up for the finale that Robert Zane is in, and my mom and he were talking like two people that had been friends for 30 years. It was kind of awesome. We’re so lucky. CBS was very generous to let us have him as much as they did [Pierce co-stars in The Odd Couple]. We were a little bit limited for how much we could have him, but we used him as much as we could. We haven’t seen the last of Robert Zane.
And I will say, ironically, the moment where Robert Zane is revealed in the scene and then Mike gets all worried — since we had such a limited time with Wendell Pierce, half of that scene was shot with a body double. When Mike sees him in the mirror, I wanted to cut to a shot of Robert Zane in the mirror so we could see what Mike was seeing. But if you shot the mirror, it was the body double. That was just funny. It was a good act by Patrick [J. Adams].
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Obviously, we’re still waiting to learn who ratted out Mike, which you’ve said will happen soon. But did you know how you were going to end this whole situation? How you were going to get him off, if you do get him off?
I didn’t know what we were going to do. I was like, “We can’t fight this thing.” [Executive producer] Chris Downey had a pitch that he wanted the back six episodes [of Season 5] to be us fighting this thing. I was like, “Are you crazy? How can we fight this thing? He didn’t go to Harvard.” He said to me, “He’s in the Harvard database. He’s in the bar. He passed the bar. He knows the law. He’s been practicing as a lawyer.“ He starts naming all these things. I was like, "Holy s–t. Maybe we can fight this thing.” I was like, “But we have to have that argument,” and that’s the scene when Mike’s like, “We can’t fight this thing. I did this.” Harvey says what Chris said to me very passionately, and then I added in when he says, “And on top of all that, we don’t need to prove he is a lawyer; they need to prove he isn’t.” What was unspoken was there are many people that the public is convinced did a crime but they get off. You have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is not the same as in your gut knowing they did it. That’s how it is that Mike has a chance to get out of this thing.
After that, did I know what the end game was? I did know some things, and other things I did not know. I will say this: in the writing of the [season] finale, I changed my mind on one major thing literally the night before we shot the scene.
Last question: What can you tease about Mike and Rachel’s relationship moving forward?
They had a wedding planned. In the midst of all this, it’s logical to assume that they’re certainly not going to move forward with the wedding — or not until we figure out how we’re going to get out of this thing, and if they get out of this thing. Along the way, their relationship is going to go through a crucible also. I think [this situation] brings out a lot of opportunity for either loyalty, betrayal, deepening of relationships, fracturing of relationships, from top to bottom. It’s just so ironic that Mike was going to quit for the two of them so they could have a life together, and then he gets arrested. Now he has to figure out what does his arrest mean for Rachel and her future, and therefore, for his future with her and her family and everything. That’s a big part of the last six also.
Suits airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on USA.
