The First Season Of Suits Was Basically An Autobiography
USA Network wound up striking it rich with "Suits," a heightened drama about the inner workings of a high-profile law firm. The series ran for an impressive nine seasons and managed to always keep up the same, steady winning formula, combining whip-smart legalese, backroom intrigue, and a fair amount of backstabbing betrayal.
When the show was first conceived, there wasn't any intention to make a series that was perfectly constructed for the binge-watching streaming era. Every episode of "Suits" bleeds right into the next, which has allowed the series to captivate an entirely new audience over at Netflix. (If my wife and I hadn't already watched almost every episode, we'd be auto-playing it, too, along with the rest of the world.)
Creator and showrunner Aaron Korsh could never have guessed that "Suits" would wind up having such a long life when he first conceived of the show. In fact, Korsch originally had no intention of even becoming a writer. That's very much in line with the lead character Michael "Mike" Ross (Patrick J. Adams), who gets recruited by Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) to join his law firm despite the fact that Mike never actually attended law school.
Korsh wound up basing Mike on his own experiences, which helped develop Mike's story and his unlikely foray into the legal world. Both Korsh and the character of Mike Ross were on completely different paths, but they eventually found the career they were meant for. Using his own life as a blueprint, Korsch was able to craft one of the most compelling characters in episodic television from the last decade.
Write what you know
Originally, "Suits" wasn't designed to be a legal drama. Korsch had used his own background in finance as the basis for the show when he was still trying to figure out how to transition from being a businessman to a writer, and eventually, a showrunner. "Every showrunner has their different path to how they get there," Korsch once told Collider. "Mine was different than most of the showrunners that I know, in that I came from a different career."
He continued, explaining that people in his real life eventually became the inspiration for the dynamic power duo of Harvey and Mike:
"I went to business school. I was a finance major. I worked on Wall Street as an investment banker, which is the basis, by the way, of 'Suits.' It was originally written that they were investment bankers on Wall Street. I worked for a guy named Harvey, I had a good memory, and I had a dalliance with marijuana. A lot of the basis for the show is from that."
Wisely, Korsch ultimately followed his instincts and changed the entire direction of the show. "Suits" probably wouldn't have had the same appeal if it focused on Wall Street bankers. With the law, there's always a chance that these high-power attorneys could actually be there to dole out a little justice for the greater good. The change was well worth the risk and Korsch stands behind the decision:
"I was like, 'Look, I don't know if I'm right or not, but if this thing fails and we did what I thought we should do, I can live with myself. But if it fails and I listened to someone else telling me to do something against what my insides were screaming at me to do, I would never forgive myself for that.'"
"Suits" is currently streaming on Netflix.