‘Suits’ Season 6 Finale Postmortem: Patrick J. Adams on The Moment Mike‘s Been Waiting For
Warning: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 6 finale of Suits, “Character and Fitness.”
It was a moment six seasons in the making: Mike Ross is now a lawyer.
“There was definitely a cheer,” Patrick J. Adams says of when the cast read the script for the Season 6 finale at the table read. “This is major. We were very, very happy.”
If memory serves him, it only became clear to him when he started filming the back six episodes that that’s where the writers were definitely headed. He didn’t know Jessica (Gina Torres) would make that last-minute return to help Mike secure his future until much later. “Toward the end of the season, it becomes harder and harder to request days off. Everybody in the show has different family [obligations] and places they need to be, so we always have our days of, ‘I need to fly to Florida,’ ‘I need to fly to L.A.,’ or ‘I need to be here to do that,’ and on the last episode, it was really on lockdown, and then we slowly found out that part of the reason was we had to be scheduled for certain actors,” he says. “When we dug a little deeper, we found out that Gina was coming back. So a week before we got the script, probably the episode before, we found out that Gina would be coming back. Of course we were all ecstatic. So happy to see her again.”
It’s a great full-circle moment for her character. “[Mike being a fraud] was something we were keeping from her and hiding from her, and when she found out about it she was the most angry. So now that she gets to be the one that actually seals Mike’s fate and allows him to be a real lawyer, I think it’s a perfect culmination of her storyline in the world of Suits — not that she couldn’t come back and do her own thing, and then obviously, she might potentially get her own little show,” Adams says. “I never got a lot of scenes with Gina. She was always the person staring at me across the room angrily because I had done something to ruin her firm, so I think it’s a big deal that she ends up being the one that’s saving us.”
Since the beginning of the series, the show has always had high stakes: Would Mike’s secret be found out? Would he go to jail? Would he be able to rebuild his life afterward? Now that Mike has everything he’s ever wanted (Rachel and a job as a real attorney working with Harvey, who’s allowing him to do one case with the clinic for every corporate case he does for Specter Litt), what is Suits going to be like now? Adams hasn’t read a script for the Season 7 premiere, but he has thoughts. “I think what’s great is that now that we’ve been through the ringer, the show gets to go and do a return to form. You get to bring these guys back together, but see it in a different way with a different motivation. Mike is making clear that he’s fully committed to working for people who have no one else to work for them and being a part of these pro bono cases, but he also gets to do that while working with Harvey, and I think that’s something that the audience has been waiting a long time for — to see these guys back together,” he says. “I think it’s a fresh start. I think Mike’s grown up, he’s paid the price, and now he doesn’t have to hide behind anything. He’s allowed to really do what he’s been wanting to do for so many years without any reservations and without holding himself back.”
Mike told Harvey he expects him to take the reins of the firm and move into Jessica’s office, if only because Mike wants Harvey’s office. Should we expect to see some original Patrick J. Adams photography on the walls? “I’m definitely gonna push for that. I haven’t been a part of the conversation as of yet, because I don’t know where we pick up the next season. Usually in Suits fashion, we tend to pick up right where we left off. If that’s the case, there might be a couple of episodes of transition… As soon as I get up there, you can bet that I’ll be asking for certain things in that office and getting rid of other things,” he says. “There’s some weird things in Harvey’s office. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the strange motorcycle model behind him. Obviously that strange painting that we found out his mom painted, so now I feel like a jerk. And then his desk. I’ve never been fond of Harvey’s desk. I think I want something a little classier than that. He can take all his stuff for all I care. I’m gonna redo it, making it full hipster in there.”
Adams anticipates some much needed happier times for Mike and Rachel. “I think it should be exciting that they both get to be young professionals now,” he says. “They’ve both been chasing their dreams and had to overcome a huge amount of hardships and endure what most couples would not be able to survive. Come Season 7, again I have no idea, but it would be fun to explore those feelings now that we’re out from under the weight of the secrets.”
He also would expect the question of what lines Harvey and Mike are willing to cross will continue to provide some drama. “That balance of what these guys do for a living and the positive change they want to see in the world sometimes comes with the cost of the morality. That forces them to do something small in order to accomplish something big. That’s always been a pat of the show,” he says, “but I think now, especially that Mike’s cuffs are off and he’s allowed to run in the direction that he’s always wanted to, we’re gonna be seeing that struggle be a really common theme in the show.”
Related: ‘Suits’ 611 Postmortem: Gabriel Macht on Those Darvey Scenes, Harvey’s Next Step
That begs the question: does he think we’ve seen the last of Anita Gibbs? “I hope not,” he says. “She’s a badass. She’s terrifying. I really have no idea. I would guess not. I think all of our great characters in this show find a way to come back. … So I wouldn’t be surprised if we haven’t seen the last of Anita.”
We did get to see prison shrink Julius (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) return in the finale as well to testify on Mike’s behalf. “I think that was an interesting dynamic because Mike has been trying to convince Julius that he had great intentions and Julius helped pick apart Mike’s psyche a little bit. So for Julius, a licensed psychiatrist, to come in and go after Anita Gibbs on Mike’s behalf was really satisfying,” he says. “It felt like you had seen these characters all misunderstanding each other for so long, and then finally you see Julius lock into what Mike is about and use that against Anita.”
“Cathartic” is the word Adams uses to describe his experience of filming the episode when Mike’s dream comes true. “It’s really exciting when after six seasons of the show you get to finally deliver a moment that your character’s been waiting their whole life for,” he says. “Now, going into Season 7, we’re really excited to take that enthusiasm and that excitement that we hope the audience has, too, and do it justice and see what the next chapter of stories we can tell is.”
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