"A Million Magical Moments" - Pt. 1 with Aaron Korsh & Kevin Bray

Summary

Podcast Summary: Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast – "A Million Magical Moments" (Part 1)

Episode Information:

• Title: Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast
• Host/Author: SiriusXM Podcasts
• Episode: "A Million Magical Moments" - Part 1 with Aaron Korsh & Kevin Bray
• Release Date: February 11, 2025

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Introduction

In the inaugural part of "A Million Magical Moments," hosts Patrick J. Adams and Sarah Rafferty delve deep into the intricacies of the hit TV show “Suits.” This episode features special guests Aaron Korsh, the creator and executive producer of "Suits," and Kevin Bray, the director and producing director responsible for shaping the show's early seasons. Together, they explore behind-the-scenes experiences, character developments, and the creative dynamics that made "Suits" a television phenomenon.

Guest Introductions

• Aaron Korsh ([01:43]): Creator and executive producer of "Suits," currently working on the upcoming "Suits LA." Aaron has been a consistent presence on the podcast, offering insights through texts, voice memos, and consultations.

• Kevin Bray ([02:07]): Directed 12 episodes of "Suits," including the pilot, and served as the producing director for the first two seasons. Kevin's portfolio boasts acclaimed shows like "Succession," "Shameless," and "The Morning Show," alongside feature films and music videos for iconic artists.

Discussion on Directing "Suits"

Dynamic Between Directors and Cast:

• Rick Hoffman ([03:58]): Shares his initial reservations about working with Kevin Bray, recalling a challenging first meeting where Kevin seemed to change his vision entirely between discussions ([03:58]). Despite early conflicts, Rick emphasizes Kevin's professionalism and the strong bonds formed thereafter.

• Gabriel Macht ([04:32]): Elaborates on the collaborative environment on set, highlighting how improvisation and mutual respect allowed for creative freedom. He recounts moments where Kevin seamlessly integrated actors' spontaneous ideas into the narrative, fostering an organic storytelling process.

Improvisation and Creative Freedom:

• Aaron Korsh ([04:17]): Reflects on Kevin's ability to adapt and encourage improvisation, citing specific scenes where actors' unplanned inputs elevated the script ([14:09]).

• Gabriel Macht ([15:29]): Discusses Kevin's influence on the show's aesthetic and narrative style, emphasizing the balance between following the script and embracing spontaneous creativity ([16:12]).

Relationships and Character Development

Harvey Specter's Depth:

• Gabriel Macht ([25:15]): Talks about how his portrayal of Harvey Specter evolved, gaining layers of vulnerability that weren't initially envisioned in the script ([25:15]).

• Rick Hoffman ([37:54]): Highlights the nuanced relationship between Harvey and Jessica, noting how their interactions added depth to both characters ([51:20]).

Donna Paulsen's Influence:

• Aaron Korsh ([41:37]): Remembers pivotal scenes where Donna's character brought out different facets of Harvey's personality, contributing to the show's emotional resonance ([41:37]).

Production Challenges

Budget and Time Management:

• Rick Hoffman ([62:34]): Details how budget constraints were navigated by prioritizing performances over set designs, allowing for flexibility in shooting schedules ([62:34]).

• Gabriel Macht ([35:01]): Explains the financial strategies employed to stay under budget while maintaining high production values, such as limiting the number of sets and optimizing shooting days ([35:01]).

Adapting to Constraints:

• Rick Hoffman ([64:55]): Discusses the need to "rob Peter to pay Paul," reallocating resources between departments to ensure critical scenes received adequate funding ([64:55]).

Music and Aesthetics

Choosing the Right Soundtrack:

• Gabriel Macht ([31:04]): Explains the selection process for the show's music, emphasizing the importance of needle drops like "Greenback Boogie" to set the series' tone ([31:04]).

• Rick Hoffman ([32:26]): Shares anecdotes about overcoming challenges with music licensing and how alternate tracks sometimes enhanced the final product more than originally intended ([32:26]).

Visual and Fashion Influence:

• Gabriel Macht ([25:15]): Highlights his background in fashion and how it influenced character wardrobes, ensuring a timeless and classic aesthetic for the show ([25:15]).

• Rick Hoffman ([52:17]): Commends Kevin Bray's expertise in set design and wardrobe, noting the cohesive visual style that became a hallmark of "Suits" ([52:17]).

Budget and Time Constraints

Managing Resources Effectively:

• Rick Hoffman ([62:34]): Emphasizes the importance of keeping performances the priority, even if it means reallocating funds from other departments to allow actors the time needed to deliver their best ([62:34]).

• Gabriel Macht ([64:35]): Discusses how budget oversights, like script length, were negotiated with the studio to focus on the quality of performances rather than script page counts ([64:35]).

Reflections and Surprising Moments

Unexpected Character Developments:

• Rick Hoffman ([56:41]): Reflects on how certain character interactions and relationships, such as between Harvey and Jessica, surpassed initial expectations, adding depth and complexity to the narrative ([56:41]).

• Gabriel Macht ([79:18]): Shares personal anecdotes about unforeseen character connections and how these organic developments enriched the storytelling ([79:18]).

Organic Storytelling:

• Aaron Korsh ([80:20]): Praises the spontaneous moments that arose from character interactions, reinforcing the show's authentic feel despite sticking closely to the script ([80:20]).

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Patrick and Sarah acknowledging the depth of conversation with Aaron Korsh and Kevin Bray, announcing that the discussion will continue in a two-part series. They tease upcoming topics such as the infamous "can opener" scene, Mike's bike helmet, and casting stories, signaling listeners to tune in for the next installment.

Notable Quotes:

• Rick Hoffman ([05:03]): "We were prepared for this is the pick a fight with Aaron."
• Gabriel Macht ([16:12]): "I love that you love."
• Rick Hoffman ([32:26]): "Sometimes you're like, shut the up and do it my way. At least that's what you're feeling inside."
• Gabriel Macht ([79:18]): "There's a vulnerability to him that I never anticipated on the page."

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Listeners are encouraged to send their questions to [e-mail] and may have their voice memos featured in future episodes. Remember to leave a review wherever you listen to support the show!

Transcript

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[Patrick Adams]

Hi, I'm Patrick Adams.

[Aaron Korsh]

And I'm Sarah Rafferty and this is.

[Patrick Adams]

Sidebar our Suits Watch podcast where each week we go through an episode of the show.

[Aaron Korsh]

Last week we watched the finale of season one and with that came a lot of feelings, a lot of questions, a lot of thoughts about the season as a whole.

[Patrick Adams]

So who better to discuss all of that than with the creator himself, Aaron Korsch, and director producer Kevin Bray?

[Aaron Korsh]

We're going to discuss the season, we're going to reminisce about what it was like making it, and as always, we're going to answer your questions.

[Patrick Adams]

So excited to have these guys here today. Maybe we should tell the audience, let's give a little bio, let's talk about who they are.

[Aaron Korsh]

Aaron Korsch so we are beyond grateful to have Aaron Korsch back in the studio. Listeners, you might remember that he came to talk to us at the beginning of Sidebar when we were talking about the pilot. His presence and support has been felt during this whole run through his generous texts and his voice memos and his calls and his consults. Aaron is the creator and executive producer of Suits and is currently shooting the upcoming Suits LA.

[Patrick Adams]

And we know Kevin Bray as the director of 12 episodes of Suits, including the pilot, and our producing director for the first two seasons. But listener, if you don't know his name, you have absolutely seen his work. Kevin has directed episodes of so many great shows Including Succession, Shameless, the Morning show, the Penguin, the Franchise, and Clipped, which he also executive produced. He's also directed the feature films all about the Benjamins and Walking Tall, as well as music videos for everyone from Whitney Houston to the Beastie Boys. So how lucky are we that we have these two here? We don't want to waste any time and just get into it.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah, let's get right to it. Enjoy the conversation with Aaron and Kevin.

[Gabriel Macht]

This is really crazy because this is the first time we've spoken since you fired me, so I don't know how this is gonna go.

[Aaron Korsh]

You guys, we have our faces for radio on.

[Patrick Adams]

I love getting to put you guys on camera. That feels right.

[Gabriel Macht]

I'm glad you do.

[Rick Hoffman]

I don't like it at all.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Patrick Adams]

Have you played a role in suits suits two yet? I call it suits two.

[Rick Hoffman]

I'm in 40%.

[Patrick Adams]

Shirtless.

[Rick Hoffman]

Is there another way? I didn't know.

[Patrick Adams]

All right, guys, we're doing this. Let's get real. We want to take full advantage of your being here. Thank you guys so much for coming. We're going to do an intro, but again, we have Aaron Korsch, the creator of Suits, and we have Kevin Bray, the director extraordinaire of how many episodes do we. I should know that being the first. Well, 12 episodes, I think it's more.

[Gabriel Macht]

More.

[Rick Hoffman]

I might guess 16 producing directors.

[Gabriel Macht]

16 may be true.

[Patrick Adams]

Director of the pilot of Suits. Producing director of first two. Two seasons. First two seasons, Yeah. I just feel like if there was another person who sort of created the show in this first season, it was Kevin Bray. I knew you wouldn't like that.

[Aaron Korsh]

We were prepared for this is the pick a fight with Aaron.

[Rick Hoffman]

That's not true. We are the mother and father of Suits.

[Gabriel Macht]

Good.

[Patrick Adams]

Okay.

[Rick Hoffman]

You said it was Mom.

[Patrick Adams]

I just didn't know how Aaron would take that. But who's the mother and who's the father?

[Gabriel Macht]

Mother, Mother, Father.

[Aaron Korsh]

Just for the listener. They exactly said the opposite.

[Rick Hoffman]

Mother.

[Gabriel Macht]

And another word that starts with an.

[Aaron Korsh]

F. You're using mother as half a word.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah. Yeah. Not fair.

[Aaron Korsh]

I got it.

[Rick Hoffman]

I was gonna check how many episodes Kevin directed.

[Gabriel Macht]

I know. Anton beat.

[Patrick Adams]

You have 12 episodes.

[Rick Hoffman]

I do have 12. I know. Anton might. And Mike Smith.

[Gabriel Macht]

Anton may have 16.

[Aaron Korsh]

Mike Smith had 11, I think. Did Mike Smith have 11?

[Rick Hoffman]

Mike Smith was the most. I recall.

[Patrick Adams]

Mike Smith has more than Kevin.

[Rick Hoffman]

I believe. Mike Smith is more than Kevin. Anton, I think, might be more than Kevin.

[Aaron Korsh]

Kevin, we took that personally. You know, you going off and getting all busy with, like, you shouldn't have. Stop.

[Gabriel Macht]

You gotta send your baby off.

[Patrick Adams]

He's gotta go. He's gotta go do the fancies.

[Aaron Korsh]

Gotta go do the fancies.

[Gabriel Macht]

He loves somebody.

[Aaron Korsh]

He had to leave us to go do Succession.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, I guess.

[Patrick Adams]

Which I don't talk about on this.

[Aaron Korsh]

Podcast at all, because if we dare say that, then the trolls are coming for us.

[Patrick Adams]

I'm not saying a word.

[Gabriel Macht]

Have we talked about how many Succession actors there are in the podcast?

[Aaron Korsh]

We talked about it extensively.

[Gabriel Macht]

How cool is that?

[Aaron Korsh]

Can I talk about what happened?

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah, I mean, we can talk about it still.

[Aaron Korsh]

Patrick made a joke, and he said when we were talking about that, he was like, suits. I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say that Suits walked so that Succession could run. And he was kidding. Obviously, we were talking about it, but we were really excited about all the Succession actors that we had at the beginning of our season and thought it was really incredible as gigantic Succession fans. So then, of course, a publication in Hollywood just quoted him with no context or no tone, and the trolls came.

[Patrick Adams]

People were angry. But you were a big part of why I said it, too, because you were a big part of creating the vision and the idea of what Suits is. You were a big part of the aesthetic of Suits. And then you went to direct a lot of Succession. I know you didn't create Succession with them. You weren't. You didn't direct the pilot, obviously, but you brought your special sauce to that show, and so it felt like a reasonable thing to say. And I'll still get in trouble just for talking about it.

[Aaron Korsh]

So when you were on Succession, did you ever give a direction to Brian?

[Gabriel Macht]

Gosh, I did, yeah. Yeah. He came. He said. He said. That was very inspired, young man. When I gave him the.

[Rick Hoffman]

That's a pretty good invitation.

[Gabriel Macht]

The cat in the bag under the chair.

[Rick Hoffman]

Oh.

[Gabriel Macht]

I said, when Jeremy comes down and screaming at everyone in the board meeting in the hotel.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah. Where he's losing his mind, where he's sick.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. I said. And we were shooting the whole scene with him screaming over here and him having the UTI in the chair over there.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

And I go, brian, I need you to think that that is one of your counsel. I need you to think that Jeremy is. And he does this whole improv where he's like, why is. Why is Blake so upset over there?

[Rick Hoffman]

What's his problem?

[Gabriel Macht]

Like, when he does. That was improvised. Yeah. Oh, wow.

[Patrick Adams]

That was.

[Gabriel Macht]

There's a whole run on it, and they let. They left it in. It was pretty fun.

[Aaron Korsh]

Amazing. And do you have anything for me about Matthew McFadden? Just that I could just.

[Gabriel Macht]

He's the most polite, fearless person. I had a note because sometimes directors have chainsaws and they need a scalpel. And I went up to him and I had this idea about something, and I said, can you please do this? And he didn't. Nothing. He said, sure, I'll do it. Let's do it the next one. And then he did it. And then I just get the creepy crawlies, because I can see how bad it is when he's doing it, but he's doing exactly what I ask, and he's not making fun of me. It was when he and Shiv were making love in the kitchen in that same episode. They come and have a little moment aside about having a baby, I think. And then I come and I go, ooh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. He goes, don't worry about it. But I think I know what you want, so watch this one.

[Patrick Adams]

Oh, oh, really?

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. He said, I know what you're asking for. I think now I understand what you're actually asking.

[Patrick Adams]

And then he does it.

[Aaron Korsh]

Now that I explored it in that.

[Gabriel Macht]

Way, I didn't know how to articulate that.

[Aaron Korsh]

But see, that's your thing, though, the communication. Right. With you. Like, sometimes you're talking in a more abstract, artistic way. Yeah, yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

Just.

[Aaron Korsh]

Can you jazzercise it this time? And he jazzercised it. And he knew what you meant.

[Rick Hoffman]

You know, I was in the edit bay. When we're doing. In the edit bay, like, sometimes I say, can we blah, blah, blah. And the editor, he doesn't do what I said to do. He does what I wanted him to do.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

But I said it wrong. And they just know how to make it work. It's great.

[Aaron Korsh]

So we are here today to talk about everybody's special sauce. So, Kevin, can you. Can we start with you? Because we've talked to Aaron. This is. Thank you, Aaron, for having this be your second time joining us here on Sidebar, the podcast.

[Rick Hoffman]

Under protest.

[Aaron Korsh]

Kevin. Kevin, when you came to Suits.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

When you first read the script, where were you at this point in your career? And how did this. How did the script get to you?

[Gabriel Macht]

It came to me from Alex Sepiel. Correct. Because of the work on White Collar.

[Rick Hoffman]

Oh.

[Gabriel Macht]

So I was working at USA a lot. I started with Burn Notice. I think I did some promos for Burn Notice and Jeffrey Donovan. That's the actor's name, right?

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

Said this is what the show should look like. Why can't we do slick shots like this? And so next thing, I was on an episode of Burn Notice and then I was on an episode of White Collar and then I think I did an episode that Sepuel really, really liked. And then he put me in front of you guys. Correct. And I had met with Bartas, the guys from Hypnotic. With David Bartas.

[Patrick Adams]

David Bartas. And Gene Klein.

[Gabriel Macht]

And Gene Klein, yeah. Previously on Kit. Kit Car.

[Patrick Adams]

Oh, they were remaking Knight Rider.

[Rick Hoffman]

They do not like to talk about that. If they come in, please ask, bring.

[Patrick Adams]

It up as much as possible.

[Gabriel Macht]

And you know, I. I ended up getting called back because of that. I mean, Aaron, you saw the other side of it and then.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, I don't know. How was it a meet you? Well, the first meeting was on. Maybe both meetings were on the phone. This is what I remember, the phone. Oh, yeah. Because he was away somewhere else.

[Gabriel Macht]

I was either shooting Law and Order, Criminal Intent or I was shooting one of the White Collar episodes.

[Rick Hoffman]

I just remember I'm going to tell a story. You might not even know this, but maybe you do. So, you know, I was very inexperienced and they were presenting me with directors and we had several meetings. And the first meeting with Kevin on the phone, I was like, I love this guy. He said. He said, I want it to be a cross between. I forget exactly. Michael Clayton and like how to make it in America. The how to make it in America will be how he shot the mic part and Michael Clayton combined with. I forget the movie. The Julia Roberts, Clive Owen movie. Anyway, and I loved it. I loved him. And I watched all about the Benjamins and I was like, this guy can direct. This is great. Then we had a second follow up meeting and it was like everything Kevin said in the first meeting, he completely forgot all of it. And then he started saying totally different stuff and I'm like, who the hell is this guy? I don't wanna work with him.

[Patrick Adams]

Perfect.

[Rick Hoffman]

This is what. I don't know if Kevin knows it.

[Patrick Adams]

This is the perfect.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, you told me this.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, I told you. Okay. And I wanted another director who. I will not say who it is. And basically. Well, I'll tell you gu. But I don't want to, you know. So anyway, they basically said, well, too bad you're having Kevin Bray as a director. And the way I work is once you're on my team, I'm not gonna like hold a grudge or anything. And I would say within what, 24 hours. It was like I'd known Kevin my whole life and he Was like my closest friend. And so I still regret that they shoved you down my throat to this day.

[Patrick Adams]

How close were you guys in the process leading up to shooting the pilot? How much time do you spend together? What's that relationship like?

[Gabriel Macht]

An incredible amount of time. I mean, we were every day for 12 hours. 11 hours.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, because it started with casting. We had already cast you and Gabriel because we couldn't get a director until we had the lead roles cast. We didn't have an official pickup.

[Patrick Adams]

I think I was. I was cast first.

[Aaron Korsh]

He was cast first. We learned that from Bonnie.

[Gabriel Macht]

So the chemistry was.

[Patrick Adams]

We didn't do chemistry reads.

[Gabriel Macht]

You did chemistry with.

[Patrick Adams]

With Megan.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah. So to be clear, Kevin had nothing to do with that. But anyway. But no, after that, we were casting all the time. It was like. It was great. We were everything.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. The first time I had been back to New York to do something of that, you know, magnitude. So I had shot in New York. But this is as much as something could be. Mine could be. It was really fantastic to go to New York.

[Patrick Adams]

What jumped out at you when you read what was called the illegal mind at that time? Like, what was. What was drawing? Do you remember your pitch? Do you remember, like, what you wanted to do with it? What excited you about it?

[Rick Hoffman]

Wait, just to be clear, he didn't remember his pitch from the first meeting to the second meeting 15 years ago.

[Gabriel Macht]

Tell me, what was the difference between the first meeting and the second meeting?

[Rick Hoffman]

I just. I don't know. But you were in the second meeting. You were saying opposite things that you had said in the first meeting.

[Gabriel Macht]

Huh?

[Patrick Adams]

Perfect. Honestly, that is the perfect introduction to Kevin. It is, right?

[Rick Hoffman]

Perfect.

[Aaron Korsh]

But that's because you're so spontaneous with the way that you work in the moment. We talked about this with Aaron when we first talked about the pilot, how that first shot where we're coming down the building and then we go into the building, then we follow Lewis across the building, then we come up behind Gina. Yeah, right.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

That. That was not something that was, like, totally micromanaged and fraught and chosen. It was something that was discovered. You sent a camera across the street, right?

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

And said, somebody get this. And, you know, a lot of it is organic with you, and that's what it feels like when we get to be directed by you. You're discovering it. You're. You're discovering things in the moment. And that's sometimes what happened. I felt like, with the famous Kevin Bray oners, which we've talked about is that you sort of see something, and then you change your idea into this more organic thing, and then that's the thing.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. I mean, once we get in the. Once we get there, I'm. I'm not a guy that is beholden to the. There's a plan that we can do if we. If we don't have another idea, a better one, and if I'm allowed to act like that, then that's the way I'm gonna shoot. We get there, and we rehearse it so many times with us, where we found things. I mean, you and the windowsill. I don't know what episode that was. When we're sitting in the boardroom, I'm jumping forward. Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

The first one. That was the first shot we shot on stage. I remember.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, that, like, I love that. It's so fun to watch the shows again and see, as I was saying to you earlier, I was like, that's a good shot. Who did that? Oh, I did that shot. That's good. And kind of like a bowing to all my references and all the people from the past that have kind of inspired me to even do this. So that was probably somewhat improvised. Right. Like, why don't you try it up there? You kind of walked in.

[Patrick Adams]

You were big on trying. Let's try it. Let's see how it feels.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

Patrick, I should tell you that Kevin told me that he prepared for today. He watched a bunch of the episodes he.

[Gabriel Macht]

My episodes.

[Rick Hoffman]

I also want to say, wait, because he said a second ago, you said, I watched that, and I really liked it. And I want to say all the time. I mean, it's 15 years since we shot the pilot, and every once in a while, every so many years, Kevin will just call me up and be like, man, I killed it on that pilot.

[Aaron Korsh]

Good. We loved it.

[Patrick Adams]

The other day, he was like. I said, you were great, man. These are great stuff. He's like, yeah, I was, man. I was in it. I was in the pilot.

[Gabriel Macht]

I mean, I don't do that often, but I'll tell you, every time I come back to that thing, I think it holds up. I think there's a timelessness to that thing that. That is pretty good. I love that you love.

[Rick Hoffman]

I do love that you love.

[Aaron Korsh]

And that's what Aaron wanted us to have with this experience because we hadn't watched everything and decided to embark on doing this. This podcast and watching it together. He did say, like, I hope you can find the joy of what we all made together and appreciation for it. That kind of thing. So it's great.

[Gabriel Macht]

You do the nostalgia brings, you know, an aroma of melancholy sometimes. Like, it's just. Yeah. It's been very sweet to review this sounds like the end. We're not done. But the pilot. I don't think I answered your question about reading the pilot. I didn't understand it when I read it, but I understood some parts of it. There was an energy. There was Aaron's humor. The humor is the humor that I like, whether it be Jonathan Demme or Howard Hawks. Like the cracking dialogue, the kind of rhythm. Aaron's bad up bop or badop bop. Right.

[Patrick Adams]

That's it right there.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. Like that. The snare. The. What is that? That's the snare of the symbol. I don't know. But that hit comes much later, you know, or sometimes it doesn't come at all. So I think I. As much as I couldn't literally in ingest some of the stuff, like I. Intuitively. And I was like. And then that initially it was. It was Clayton. Clayton is still a very strong movie. Really was kind of awesome. And to combine that with, I thought, the immediacy of how to make it in America.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah. Which I do want to say ironically starred Brian Greenberg, who is.

[Patrick Adams]

Oh, that's the show on hbo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. So those components and for them to. Okay, I'll jump to the. When we finished. And I think it was Bartas who said, not often do we get a situation where a director will present us something. And at the end, it kind of looks very much like what he presented in the first place. And that was one of the biggest compliments.

[Patrick Adams]

Wait, meaning the.

[Gabriel Macht]

I don't know. Was that you or was that Bartis?

[Patrick Adams]

Wait, wait, you mean present the pilot? Like when you've actually directed the pilot?

[Gabriel Macht]

When we do the visual picture. And we went in that room and it was so frightening to be in that room and do those, you know, where we had to do the image boards.

[Aaron Korsh]

What is that? What is that? I don't know what that is. The visual visuals.

[Rick Hoffman]

It was just the presentation to the network of what the show was gonna look like. Vision board of style.

[Gabriel Macht]

And I think we presented that and we made it and we did it. I mean.

[Patrick Adams]

And that's. The two of you together now. You're working together for that.

[Rick Hoffman]

That's Kevin. I mean, we worked on that together, but I didn't.

[Patrick Adams]

You're okaying things, though.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

I mean, if something stuck out or something, I would. But in particular, at that time, I Had very little visual knowledge or reference or point of view or anything. So it was really. Kevin. I was much more focused on just performance at the time. Now I've.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, the Mike Ross Mohawk thing.

[Patrick Adams]

Missed opportunity.

[Rick Hoffman]

Mistake.

[Patrick Adams]

Missed opportunity. Well, he gets a little bit of what I'm curious about talking about in our whole conversation, which is you two are so different. Right. Like, you have different approaches, different aesthetics, different things that interest you, different ways of doing things. I have to go, no, but in the best way. And I think I'm so curious. And we don't have to answer it as one question, but just sort of contextually throughout the conversation is like, where that was helpful, where it was hard, how you guys overcame that at times when you would. Because you both come at problems from totally different directions. You have different references.

[Aaron Korsh]

You want to kill each other communication styles.

[Gabriel Macht]

Totally.

[Patrick Adams]

But you also respect each other immensely. And so I think that that's a really rare, amazing thing. It has a lot to do with why we're sitting here today and Suits is such a hit and you're shooting a second Suits. So, you know, again, you don't have to answer that question, but I want to get to the bottom of it a bit about, like, what you love about each other, what you loved right away, what was tough right away, and how you overcame that to help make the show what it was.

[Gabriel Macht]

I think it's laughs. I think we make each other laugh in profound or a unique way to our relationship. Probably I'm putting words maybe in mouth, but I would.

[Rick Hoffman]

I'll say. I want to start with the. Because when you were saying that there's. We are different in many, many ways, but there's two ways. I was gonna. Maybe more than two ways, but we are both silly. We both will laugh at ourselves and each other. That's number one. And that's a lot of Harvey and Mike. Right. Like giving each other shit and being able to laugh at each other and. And ourselves. That's number one. And that's was apparent in 45 seconds into once we started working together. But the other thing is, the one approach that we are similar is we do both when we get there. Are willing to see. Right. For me, from a writing standpoint, if we break a story a certain way, but I get to writing the scene and it doesn't feel right. I'm not writing it the way we said we were gonna write it. I'm gonna change it. If it doesn't feel right in the moment, Kevin shoots that way.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

So those are the similarities. Which were more important than the differences to me. The difference is, you know, if there was a frustrating thing for me, it was not that we disagreed once in a while, it was when we were done disagreeing. I said this to you a few because I had wanted Kevin. Look, the suits LA Pilot was shot by Vic Mahoney. She did an outstanding job. And I wouldn't trade it for a million dollars, whatever. But I had originally wanted Kevin to direct the pilot, but he was not.

[Gabriel Macht]

A lot of money for you. Yeah, that's true.

[Rick Hoffman]

I wasn't making it as I said it. I'm sorry. I wouldn't trade it for a billion dollars.

[Aaron Korsh]

Things that I would trade for a million dollars.

[Rick Hoffman]

But no, I would not trade that experience. And I'm so glad she directed that pilot. But I had wanted Kevin to, but he was unavailable for. He's on an HBO deal. He's too fancy for all of us. But I know. I totally forgot where I was going on this, but. Oh, no.

[Gabriel Macht]

That I'm stubborn.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. When he was maybe he's so stubborn. And when we had discussed if we could get him out of his deal and he was maybe gonna direct the pilot, I was like, listen, once a decision's been made, I just need you to stop arguing after the decision is already made. Stop arguing. And he basically is like, here's why I'm not gonna do that. And I just had to realize if we were to do it, I'd just have to accept Kevin's going to. I mean, he still now calls me up and tells me why I was wrong in season two about blah, blah, blah.

[Gabriel Macht]

It's like the Newlywed Game. He thinks I'm stubborn.

[Patrick Adams]

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[Gabriel Macht]

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[Patrick Adams]

So the experience of the pilot, when you think back all those years ago, what was that like getting to the end of the pilot? We're done. We've just shot, what was it, three weeks in New York? I think it was almost three weeks. What are you feeling?

[Gabriel Macht]

It was pretty much once we were shooting, it was all fun, and we were realizing what kind of great decisions we had made. We were like, I mean, we got Christopher to do the costumes, and I had a very specific thing that I wanted to happen costume wise.

[Aaron Korsh]

Can you speak to that? CHRISTOPHER P. We remember Christopher, and the costumes in the pilot are amazing. But what did you see? Because there's so many aesthetic choices that we think were yours.

[Gabriel Macht]

Well, we just, you know, I'm maybe it's not apparent, but I used to be a little bit of a fashion person. As I said to my son yesterday, victim tragically fashionable in regards to what Harvey was gonna look like, what you were gonna look like, and the differences between the two and what your character would wear. So the whole aesthetic of the show. And we also wanted this classical thing, which I think was more of a subconscious kind of artistic thing, where I wanted it to be classic and kind of timeless. I talked about Front Page. I talked about Howard Hawks, I talked about the snappy dialogue. And also that kind of white shoe Law Firm is kind of immutable like that aesthetic. People kind of look the same now as they did 40 years ago, so that was something we wanted to lean into. Now I've Gone off topic. I can't.

[Aaron Korsh]

No. Okay, so just to help you get back on, you were saying when you finished the pilot and you looked back on it, you saw a few things that you.

[Gabriel Macht]

Aaron was just looking at the image of the moment after we were introduced to Gina and Harvey when they confront the gentleman that's standing in that shot you were just looking at.

[Patrick Adams]

In the office.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, in the office. That first confrontation. Your balls are.

[Rick Hoffman]

Late night in the rf Gerald Tate.

[Gabriel Macht]

Gerald Tate. Yeah, your balls are in my fist. But that, like, I think. I don't know. That was a moment. I don't know when that was in the process of shooting, but when we shot that scene, I think Deneau and I looked at each other and maybe you as well, and we're like, jim.

[Patrick Adams]

Deneau is the DP of the pilot.

[Gabriel Macht]

We're like, this is, like, elevated. Like we're doing something here, and we made the right decisions. That guy was good to be, like, a. A guest actor. Oh, my God. Yeah, he set the tone. And we were so privileged to get all these great New York actors who were, like, had ballast. And so that was one of the scenes, and it just kept happening. I called Aaron over the weekend, and that was the scene where you are brought into Louis Litz to see the firing of.

[Aaron Korsh]

Oh, yeah, we love that.

[Gabriel Macht]

That's one of my favorite scenes, sitting at that table. I'll put that up against anything, any scene I've ever shot.

[Rick Hoffman]

I know you had orientation from Rachel, but I wanted to give you a special welcome from me.

[Gabriel Macht]

You wanted to see me?

[Rick Hoffman]

Yes, Gary, please come in. Mike, this is Gary Lipski. Gary's one of our most promising associates from last year. Hi, Gary. Ms. Pearson wanted me to ask, have you completed the Petrenko filing?

[Patrick Adams]

I'll get right on it.

[Rick Hoffman]

Don't bother. You're fired.

[Gabriel Macht]

What? You can't fire.

[Rick Hoffman]

Oh, yes, I can. And I just did. Go pack up. Wait, did I. Did I discuss where that came from in the script?

[Patrick Adams]

No. What?

[Rick Hoffman]

I had a roommate freshman year of college, and he pledged a fraternity. I did not. I thought that was crazy. Why would you do that? A bunch of people gonna torture you for a year so that you can be in their club. Seems silly to me. But anyway, first night of his pledging, he comes back. I was like, how was it? He says they made them all drink a certain amount of shots, right? And this one kid refused to do either the third shot or the first shot. I don't know which shot. And they were like, you'll do or you're out. And the kid was like, I'm not doing it. And they kicked him out. And my roommate was like, wow, I have to do what they say. And then a year later, I ran into him and I asked him, how's it going? He goes, you know, we had Mark Silverberg come in and pretend to be that guy that doesn't do the shot. It was a year later I realized they had.

[Patrick Adams]

It's always a pretend setup.

[Rick Hoffman]

They do it every year. So I was like, this is so cool. And that's where that scene came from.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. So there were so many instances, you know, Louis Litt confronting that same gentleman outside the.

[Rick Hoffman]

You mean confronting Gerald Tate? Yeah, but you know that that scene was cut, but then I think they put it back in the movie. Put back in for Netflix. Yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

But still beautiful.

[Gabriel Macht]

Beautiful. And also, like, nailing New York, the stuff we shot. I couldn't tell which one of the scenes where I left half the scene on the floor. But that wasn't that season, was it? Was it that season where we didn't. Where we lost the last page of the sides?

[Rick Hoffman]

Oh, that was. No, that was.

[Patrick Adams]

Wait, really? We shot a scene without the last page?

[Rick Hoffman]

No, without the middle page. It was like half page and then a huge middle page and a second half page. And I was like. You didn't notice? No one noticed. I wasn't there.

[Patrick Adams]

This is during the season, though. This is not the pilot.

[Rick Hoffman]

It was during the season. I think that was season two. But, you know, what a shot. Now that you're talking about the pilot, when the bike.

[Aaron Korsh]

The bike is beautiful.

[Rick Hoffman]

But. Yes, yes, we always talk about that. But when Mike is walking on the street after.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, With Slow Mo. After she walks away.

[Rick Hoffman]

After she walks away.

[Patrick Adams]

Oh, right. With all the people in the foreground. Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

So beautiful.

[Gabriel Macht]

We had that sakamoto in with the piano that we referenced.

[Aaron Korsh]

So music. Like, how did that inform the pilot for you? Because I feel like a lot of times when you talk to me about what you were creating, you did talk about visual references in fashion, and you did talk a lot about music and jazz, and we talked a bit about, like, 1940s femme fatales and, like, you know, his Girl Friday, that kind of vibe, all of those things mixing together. But one of the things that. That we've really enjoyed talking about is the music that's composed, but also the needle drops, which are insane.

[Gabriel Macht]

And that's Gene. I'd say that that's Gene Klein. I mean, you know, conflict is hot. So this Will be the place where I'll say, like, I still am not as it's not. I get the music as it's going through the piece and it makes sense to me. And now I'm like, oh, okay, it totally works.

[Patrick Adams]

You're talking about needle drops or scores.

[Gabriel Macht]

I'm talking about needle drops.

[Rick Hoffman]

Which needle drops?

[Gabriel Macht]

Anything with heavy guitar in it. Like with heavy high up in here register. Guitar with me was not really, but it really started an energy that followed through the whole show and now kind of makes sense to me, but I was very adverse to that.

[Rick Hoffman]

I will say, look, ultimately I had to approve of any musical choices came from. But some of them came from Robert Iverson, the editor. I never know how the music gets in, but I know what I'm gonna do and what I'm not gonna do.

[Patrick Adams]

What works and what doesn't.

[Rick Hoffman]

But I do remember during the bike ride, we had a piece of music that I loved, and Alex Sepiol wanted us to change that piece of music. And I was so torn because I loved it so much, but I was like, Alex is the reason the show exists. It's the reason the show's gonna be on the air. So we did end up changing it. And I love the ultimate piece of music that's in there.

[Patrick Adams]

Did the original piece of music ever make it into the show somewhere else?

[Rick Hoffman]

I don't think so. And I don't even know what it was. Remember what it was at this point. That happened another time where we had a piece of music in there and the people wouldn't let us. The band wouldn't let us use it. And I was like, oh, you know when you get a piece of music that you love and someone tells you you can't have it? It's just the worst, right? And then we found Cold War Kids as a replacement. And I'm like, oh, my God, I might actually like this better. And then we used a lot of Cold War Kids over the course of.

[Patrick Adams]

Can you talk a bit about greenback boogie and how that came to be?

[Gabriel Macht]

So it really came very easily. It was kind of magical. And it just. It was like, I am here and I'm not going anywhere. I knew Alex Ebert since.

[Rick Hoffman]

Wait a minute. Can I just say, what does that mean?

[Patrick Adams]

I don't know, but I love it.

[Aaron Korsh]

You can feel what it means.

[Patrick Adams]

I just like, that's what's brilliant listener. Just know that what just happened is Kevin Brent.

[Rick Hoffman]

How you.

[Aaron Korsh]

You find. Get like the moments with him. You say something like that and you're like, I Don't get it, but I feel it.

[Patrick Adams]

The rest of you are asking for words and answers, and I'm just surfing on a wind.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, I'm just James Bond. If I could just grunt and groan and make gut troll noises the rest of this interview, I'd be good.

[Patrick Adams]

So good.

[Rick Hoffman]

I'm sorry, you were saying where you hit your.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, it wasn't going anywhere, that song. So the history of it is that we were looking for a track. I think Harrison was. My son was starting at Oakwood. Temi Anderson was part of the band I'm a Robot. And I knew Alex Ebert, who is a graduate from Oakwood as well. I've known him since he was probably 7 or 8 years old.

[Aaron Korsh]

You went to Oakwood?

[Gabriel Macht]

No, he was best friends with my. My nephew, Aaron Bray. They were in a rap group together when they were Young in the 90s, and Alex went on to become Alex Ebert. So I told my nephew I was looking for a track because he's a musician as well. And he said, you should probably talk to these guys. And I knew. I liked I'm a Robot. I'm a Robot seemed appropriate for the ambiance of the show. And I said, aaron, can you check me in with those guys? So I think I got on with Timmy. I don't know if I got on with Alex. Maybe I did. And I described the show, and he sent me the next day. Greenback bogey.

[Aaron Korsh]

No way.

[Gabriel Macht]

And we dropped it in. That was after the.

[Patrick Adams]

You didn't even have opening credits yet.

[Gabriel Macht]

No. So that was second season. Yeah. So.

[Aaron Korsh]

No, no, no.

[Rick Hoffman]

It was first season.

[Aaron Korsh]

But you hadn't piloted first.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

So it wasn't a Robert thing. So I don't know how. I guess I just gave it to you.

[Rick Hoffman]

They were looking for a song for the opening credits, and I do remember that, but it was not my first choice. And it was another time when we.

[Patrick Adams]

Didn'T start the Fire by Billy Joel.

[Rick Hoffman]

Which is your first one?

[Aaron Korsh]

No, the Down Easter. Alexa.

[Rick Hoffman]

I do not remember. The song that was my first choice was a little heavier than the Greenback boogie. It wasn't as fun. And again, it was a network decision, and thank God they made it. I give them full credit because I love that song. You know, I've told you guys, I'm still in the middle of my suits Rewatch with my daughter. We're up to 8, 15, and we still sing the song every single time we watch it. We sing it together. I still don't know 80% of the words, and I just Hum it. But I love it. I love it.

[Patrick Adams]

Is it the theme song of Suits la?

[Gabriel Macht]

They used it in the trailer on Saturday Night Live.

[Rick Hoffman]

The current plan is to have it be the theme song of Suit Cell.

[Gabriel Macht]

A text.

[Patrick Adams]

You heard it here first, folks.

[Gabriel Macht]

I texted both those guys. I mentioned earlier, the guys from I'm a Robot. And I said, you can send me a thank you.

[Patrick Adams]

They had a good Christmas, I guess.

[Gabriel Macht]

But also about that song is about points of view. And I think that it was Mike Ross's point of view, that song, the fucking Suits, Even the title of the show, like these gross. I'm working. I live in Brooklyn, but I have to go to Manhattan and deal with these non people.

[Patrick Adams]

Interesting.

[Gabriel Macht]

So early on, I think that was something. I think that works in the title of the show. I think that that was an interesting.

[Rick Hoffman]

Kind of what Kevin just said combined with what you guys were saying about how this is how Kevin talks and this is how he thinks. Kevin never would really read the scripts and give me notes necessarily. He would say things he liked and didn't like, but he would say things that would be incredibly effective as notes, even though he wasn't necessarily giving them as a note. So, for example, in the first season, I think it was episode nine, when they find out the accountant is a fraud. And the accountant says to Mike Ross, he says, they can never take my brain away from me. And he's watching another fraud be outed as a fraud. And Kevin said to me, after reading the script, he goes, what's that guy's train ride home gonna be like? Meaning, what's Mike Ross's train ride home gonna be like after that guy says that to him? And that bore a hole in my brain. And it came out as Mike going to ask Harvey, why did you hire me? And that was when Harvey says, you know, life's like this. I like this. So that whole scene was born out of Kevin just kind of musing about his reading of the script.

[Patrick Adams]

So you hadn't even written. Did you have a different scene in place there? Changed it. You hadn't done it yet. You hadn't done it.

[Rick Hoffman]

I hadn't done it. And that inspired me to write that scene because I was like, yes. What's the consequence to Mike Ross of hearing someone say, I've lost everything, but I still have my brain? It bore a hole in Mike's head, and it makes him go, why did you? Basically, to some degree, he's saying, why did you do this to me? And then it also got us to answer, why Harvey did do it to.

[Patrick Adams]

Him because he likes life here.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, he's a gambler.

[Gabriel Macht]

I think one of the things if. When I'm directing or we're doing a scene, you know, putting a scene up if Aaron's not there, if he's there or not. I think one of the things is I'm very silly. Right. We find funny moments. You, Patrick, did you do the thing where you said goodbye kind of half heartedly to the kid who got fired?

[Patrick Adams]

Like, bye.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, like ham wave. So to double down on the polarity of the, you know, the dialogue, we would have these behaviors. And those were the things where I'm thinking this was gonna make Eren crack up if he sees this.

[Rick Hoffman]

No, you also in the pilot when you, you know, you kind of smell your own armpit. That was just like a silly thing that you guys did.

[Patrick Adams]

But here's what I'll say about some of the silly things as now we've just watched the whole first season. That's where we're at now in our rewatch, or watch, rather. And what I'll notice is about your episodes, little moments like that feel so honest and true. Many other moments in other people's episodes feel that way too. But something remarkable about your episodes where they feel really organic and not created. And then I'll notice sometimes in other episodes there's like the trying to recreate. And that's us trying. We're trying to recreate the magic of what it was like to be on set with Kevin and find a thing. And it happened organically. And you can tell the difference between all of us being simpatico and it just being like, oh, yeah, they're just talking to each other and being silly versus they're trying to do it again. What was that? How did we do that? I don't know how we did that.

[Gabriel Macht]

We became a family, I think. And that's the experience that I like the best. I mean, I've just finished the franchise show and once you find a family, you get to those places of organic and shorthand and just kind of like we would laugh so much on stage.

[Patrick Adams]

And if we're all laughing, then we trust it.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're not afraid. Right. So that takes the fear out of it. And then it's really. To speak for the other directors, being a guest director on a show is like being a substitute teacher. Yeah. You're like, if I can just get in here and not get home and take my jacket off and see spitballs all over the back of My jacket, then. I've done a good job.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

But still, even. I mean, and I haven't. I have not rewatched season one that recently. But whether they're funny or not, there are a lot of organic moments that were not written riddled throughout the. All the seasons, certainly first season. But all the seasons of suits that, to me, are what make it special. Just organic things that were not ne. I mean, look, a million Louis Dontna moments. Yeah, we wrote them on the page. You go read it. Most of the lines you say were written, but. But the scene is not what was on the page. It's so elevated. It's incredibly elevated by the humanity that you guys bring to the thing. And that was true of you as actors, often with Kevin, but plenty with everyone.

[Aaron Korsh]

I think I was reminded of that when I was just watching the finale and the scene where Donna brings the tickets to Lewis and slides them across the desk, and then he's, like, trying not to have orgasm.

[Gabriel Macht]

You spent forever getting that.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yep.

[Aaron Korsh]

Oh, you getting the. I know. It seemed like two legs in the air in a weird way.

[Gabriel Macht]

Exactly. There's something so nasty and dirty about that. I just, like, I love that.

[Aaron Korsh]

But we spent forever. And this was like, maybe the second time that I was in a scene in season one where I was like, oh, we're really exploring and taking our time with it. And it was that scene because you had Lewis and Donna just play. Like, we improv'd. So the sliding it across and he grabbing the hand and then the like, shh. And he was like, mm, mm, mm. And I was like, let go. Let go.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yep.

[Aaron Korsh]

I totally get it. I got it. And we just. We just. You let the cameras run and you were like, no, keep going, Keep going. Like, see how far you can take this. I don't know how much of it was in the edit.

[Rick Hoffman]

A lot of it got in.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

But, like, we went berserk, like, as crazy as we possibly could with that permission so that you could dial it back in the edit to whatever it was. But I will never forget that moment in my career of being given permission to explore and to do it with Rick.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

I mean, and then even down to the moment where I had to, like, wipe his hand because. Wipe my hand on my dress. Because I was like, ew, what is on here? Right.

[Rick Hoffman]

That's essentially. Look. And that is Kevin bringing that. And that's what I'm talking about. Like, that scene, I think as written, was great, but as performed and edited was a jillion times. Better. And it's those type of things that. That's, to me, what makes Suits special.

[Aaron Korsh]

We wouldn't have known to go there, though, if you hadn't been shouting from Video Village, like, nope, keep going. Do it again. Slide the thing. No, wipe your hand off. Like, whatever it is. Maybe not exactly.

[Patrick Adams]

Is it scarier to do that and to give that kind of permission to actors if you are a guest on another show?

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah.

[Patrick Adams]

Is it because you don't know how far to push people, how much room to give them if the creator says behind you and thinking, what are we wasting our time on?

[Gabriel Macht]

Just, it's like being the new guy in the conclave environment. Like, gonna come in and tell people. That's another weird Kevin one. But, like, just, I'm gonna tell the. These priests what to do, how to do. Living in the. Who've been living in the. The Vatican for 50 years.

[Rick Hoffman]

Like, that's a good. I think that's a good lesson for both for actors, for showrunners and for guest directors. Right. For showrunners, it's a lesson of let your people within limits. Right? Because it does take up time and you can't spend 15 hours on every scene. But you can get it as written. Like my philosophy was, always get it as written well, and then have some fun, because that's where the magic comes from. So that's a good reminder to me as a showrunner to allow people to have magic for actors. I think sometimes if a guest director comes in and wants to push you out of your comfort zone, I would guess sometimes actors love that we're afraid.

[Aaron Korsh]

To be pushed sometimes if we don't know the person. But if it's Kevin, we're just like, yeah, we'll do it, but somebody new. It is hard to build that.

[Rick Hoffman]

But even if it is someone new, so think about it. If you. There has to be trust somewhere, right? You have to have someone that you trust. So if you don't trust someone, then you're not going to be able to be pushed out of your comfort zone. But if you either have trust in the director or you have trust in the showrunner that they're not going to use something that is terrible then. And if you do a take that stinks, so what? It's never going to get seen. Like, I think the lack of fear to do something that's terrible has to be there for you to do something that's great. You can't do something that's great if you're afraid of not being bad. I think yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah.

[Sarah Rafferty]

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[Rick Hoffman]

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[Aaron Korsh]

But, Kevin, since you were sort of in charge as the producing director of season one, you were the guy with the boots on the ground for all the guest directors. Like, how did you guide them?

[Patrick Adams]

Kevin directed the pilot, and when we were direct on the pilot, you guys are there. We're a team. We are that family you're talking about. We are on set. Aaron, you're there watching every shot. You're able to weigh in. That's what Built the Family is like. We can all learn the same language. And there's no one who's not on set that's calling the shots, other than maybe some executives that might have notes or something. But it was really us down on the front lines. Then when we get to Toronto to start shooting the series, Kevin is the producing director, meaning he's there to oversee all directors, as Sarah just said. But Aaron's not there. You are having to run the writers room in la.

[Rick Hoffman]

I was there for the first two or three weeks.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron Korsh]

But you're writing the season, you're editing the things that are coming out.

[Patrick Adams]

You're busy.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yes.

[Patrick Adams]

And so, Kevin, you're in sort of a position I've never fully understood of how people do, which is you're directing many episodes, so you're getting the up at bat again, but you're also in charge of sort of running the production to a certain extent, in terms of making sure that Aaron's creative vision is happening episode to episode, making sure the directors have the tools they need to continue telling the story. But you're not the guy in the director's chair.

[Gabriel Macht]

Right. That's what I was supposed to have been doing.

[Rick Hoffman]

I was gonna say I had to.

[Gabriel Macht]

Get in front of that. I. I had. It was my first time doing that job, and I think the word director was in all caps. And then producing was tiny. Yeah, tiny. Like, but because I didn't know the job or what it entailed, and I thought. I thought I had a lot more creative agency than I did. Years later, I took the producing director seminar at the dga, which I learned some.

[Patrick Adams]

Maybe should have done that first.

[Gabriel Macht]

That almost worked. But I learned some things I wish I had known back then, which is. And I think I called Aaron years later and I was like, yeah, I'm Lee Marvin. You know, the general tells me we gotta make this happen. I can say, you're gonna kill all our guys. And I can say it till I'm blue in the face. But at the end of the day, if he tells me, which is what we talked about earlier, if he tells me we're going in, then I've gotta go and die.

[Patrick Adams]

Would you have preferred to be directing every episode? Like, what's the better version of the scenario? Was it difficult? I'm sure it's difficult for many reasons, but is it difficult because you're not in the chair that you want?

[Aaron Korsh]

You have to tell other people what to do? Kind of. And that's super awkward.

[Gabriel Macht]

You know, it's awkward and I'm kind of conflict averse. So it was like. But I find myself walking into propellers quite often. I kind of enjoy it. So maybe that's what I needed to do. What I liked about that job was I've never been on set with other directors. I've been directing since I was 21. Professionally, I think, no, no, no, no. 23.

[Patrick Adams]

But when you're on set as a.

[Rick Hoffman]

Director, just to be clear, you're 87 now.

[Patrick Adams]

It looks good.

[Aaron Korsh]

Crushing it. Damn.

[Gabriel Macht]

So that was an opportunity to see other directors, very seasoned directors work and watch them. And through the years I've stolen that or used that opportunity to steal a lot of tricks from people. So that was great. But one of the descriptions of the producing director's job is you draw a circle on the ground for the directors coming in, metaphorically, you give them a box of crayons. You say you can do whatever you want inside this box, inside this circle. Right, right, right. Do not go outside of them. And so that was my job, which.

[Patrick Adams]

Is so counter to whom. What we just talked about is you as director, the person like, well, what if we colored over here? What if we color it over here?

[Aaron Korsh]

Let's try it. Let's try it.

[Gabriel Macht]

No, but I mean, you can imperfect inside that frame.

[Rick Hoffman]

But if he were there and see them going outside the circle and liked it, he could expand the circle. He has the ability to then expand that circle.

[Patrick Adams]

But it's also his job to make sure that you in LA are delivering the show that you think you're making 100%.

[Rick Hoffman]

But I will say this, you also. There are jokes aside, there are things that Kevin is strong about as a producer and things that he is less strong about. But what he is strong about was and was the set design which occurred during the first season or two. Right. Cause we added that lobby reception area in Season 2 and the style of the show, the fashion and who we're hiring as DP and production designer. He was instrumental in putting in place the people that were in charge of how the show looked. And that was true of the pilot. I mean I had no. I didn't tell him who he should have for DP or, or production designer or wardrobe or any of that stuff. I didn't know and I just trusted him and it was a great decision. So you did do a great job in terms of that and then in also directing key episodes throughout the season. Right.

[Gabriel Macht]

And we maintained the aesthetic of the show and I think we improved upon it. We did like you watch through the process of the first season, the show get more mature aesthetically and. But story wise, I felt like it kind of found what its tone was by the second half of the first season.

[Rick Hoffman]

To me I would say 107 is when we really took a big leap.

[Aaron Korsh]

Which one was 107?

[Rick Hoffman]

It was the mock trial episode.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah, that's what we thought. That's what we thought you could tell. Yeah, yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

Just to say a little bit, the producing directing. So that seminar at the dga, John Wells was very instrumental and he said, you know, I guess this applies to everyone. But you have to remember when you're going in for a job interview to interview the people who are interviewing you and be very straightforward. Otherwise you'll be fucked when you get in there. Are they the right people for you? Are you going to be able to give them what they want? So the producing director job that I would like to do is exactly what you said is much more creative. I'm not going to call actors to make sure they get or places on time or be like a kind of executive line producer. That's not the. I have no desire to do that nor do I have the aptitude to do that.

[Patrick Adams]

Is that an expected.

[Gabriel Macht]

Stronger now? I think just. But that is expected of you, I think so valuable.

[Rick Hoffman]

It kind of depends on what your. Who your team is and who you have in what position. But it's always a plus to have that. Yeah, but it's not. It's not Kevin's interest and it's not his forte. And you just have to Accept that. Because he brings other incredible things to the table.

[Gabriel Macht]

I don't think I would do it. I would try very aggressively not to. To not be a producing director again in that form. I would rather be.

[Rick Hoffman]

You told me this. You want to be brought in to help design the sets and maybe hire the directors that get hired and maybe hire the key people. And he wants to get paid for working half the time.

[Gabriel Macht]

Exactly.

[Patrick Adams]

So say we all.

[Aaron Korsh]

You did say. You mentioned being on set that first season and maybe that there were some things that you saw other directors do that you really liked or borrowed in the future. Can you remember any of those moments?

[Gabriel Macht]

Just watching the rehearsal processes of some of them. Watching the ones that were actors, I mean, or had more experience with actors. You know, Felix was really interesting to deal with. We had a little bit of conflict. That was one of the instances. His first shot, Jim Deneau, was that the first episode he shot.

[Patrick Adams]

There were a lot of interesting shots in Finne. Felix's episode.

[Gabriel Macht]

Right, Felix, like when you guys are at the hot dog stand and he's crossed the line the whole time, and then he's first angled.

[Patrick Adams]

There's a lot of high angle to.

[Aaron Korsh]

Low angle coming in behind them, and.

[Gabriel Macht]

We'Re like, we do not use angle. We do not. Because I didn't want it to look like white collar. And I said, we're not using giant fisheye lenses. And he's like. And I was kind of annoyed with him. And I think the first shot he set up and Jim tried to tell him, you know, we don't want to use lenses wider than a. I don't know, what was it, 32 or whatever. We never wanted. First thing he does is this low, wide angle shot of a. Of a car where you think it's going to be like, hydraulics.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

And we were like. They got in an argument and goes, well, I'll do mine and you do yours. To Jem and I, we were, oh.

[Rick Hoffman]

No, here we go.

[Patrick Adams]

Here we go. Long episode.

[Gabriel Macht]

And by the end, I think he came back again, Right?

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, he was an interesting. Yeah, no, he came back. He shoots beautiful episodes. He was very efficient.

[Patrick Adams]

Very, very efficient. That was my memory.

[Gabriel Macht]

Right.

[Patrick Adams]

Like, got the day on to the minute.

[Rick Hoffman]

He got the days. And also his episodes were beautif. Beautiful.

[Aaron Korsh]

He did the first flashback, I think he did.

[Rick Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Gabriel Macht]

But he said something really important to me, which was like, you know, don't have me back. Because he was old school.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah. Like, I'm gonna do my thing. He hired me. I'm gonna do my thing.

[Gabriel Macht]

I don't need to come back here and go do somewhere else. Like, he had enough experience and enough jobs under his belt because he wasn't a problem child.

[Rick Hoffman]

Well, this is what I would say. If anybody's an expiring director or something like that, you can learn from Felix a lot for this Felix, I'll come and anyone can, because having the confidence to say, this is what I want to do, this is what I do do, and I am confident that I do a good job, which he does and did, is great, and that's something to learn. But what I would say if I were talking to Felix is, Felix, if you had a slightly more humility, you could learn. Because I think his shooting style is genius and brilliant. But I do think he could have had. He wanted to learn how to be a better director of actors, performances. He could have. And to me, this is what I mean about, like, sometimes experience can be your enemy because you're so sure you're right, but being open to being wrong, or at least what you were saying, learning from someone else. Right. That's how you get better. And to me, you can get better infinitely. There's an infinite amount of things you can do as a showrunner, as an actor, as a writer that you could learn. And it's just finding that balance of when you're like, no, I'm sure this is the way I want to do it. And sometimes being open to, oh, my God, I might be wrong, I might have something to learn here.

[Patrick Adams]

That's got to be very hard for someone in your position. And I'll credit you. You've always been somebody who. We would have convers where you'd want to understand how I would approach things as an actor. Like, how do you think about it? Like, what do you look for when you're looking at a scene? And we would talk about, like, objectives, which is a big thing with actors. And you were like, huh, I never even thought about that. And we would have great conversations.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Patrick Adams]

And how do you, as somebody who had to juggle so much, you know, your job is crazy. You're editing, you're writing, you're. You're doing all of the things at once. You're doing it again now because you. You can't help yourself, yourself. How do you create enough space to be willing to learn? Especially from someone like Kevin at the time, you're far away, you're in la, Kevin's up there, he's making sure that your vision is happening. How do you find the balance of like, let me be open to suggestion and your idea. And no, like, this has got to be the way it is. I have to make a decision. I can't be open to everything all the time.

[Rick Hoffman]

There are different kinds of people. Some people are probably more inclined to be open, and those people need to work on saying, no, that's it. I'm done. And other people are more inclined to being like, no, I know what I'm doing, and they should work on listening more. I saw this thing recently. Jeff Bezos was talking about people that are right more often than they're not. And he goes, you can practice being good at that. And one of the things that he said was, people that are right more often than not change their mind a lot. And when he said that, I was like, oh, my God. I've always said this my whole life. They always tell me, you always think you're right. And I'm like, yeah, because when I think I'm wrong, I change my mind. Do you want to think you're wrong all the time? It didn't make any sense to me. So I see you guys looking at.

[Patrick Adams]

Me, but I think some people in your job description, you have to be right. You have to make a decision.

[Rick Hoffman]

Well, you have to make a decision, and sometimes you have to say, look, I might be wrong, but I got to move on. To me, I am hungry to make the thing better. So if I think changing my mind is gonna make the thing better, I'm gonna do it. But sometimes this is the most frustrating thing about my job. I'll say this right now. All day long, from the second you wake up until the second you go to bed, you are bombarded with people telling you, not just questions, with people trying to tell you, you know, it would be better if you didn't do it the way your gut thinks you should do it. That's all you get. That's from the second you get to the office till the second you go to bed. That's what you're hearing. And sometimes, as you guys know, when I could get. You know, I never did that.

[Patrick Adams]

I never did that. Not once.

[Rick Hoffman]

Everybody but Patrick did that. And sometimes you're like, shut the up and do it my way. At least that's what you're feeling inside, of course. But if you let that take over, then the show will not be good. A. Even if you were right, you're going to stifle the creativity of the people, but you're gonna harm your own ability. You're gonna be less happy when you get in the edit bay. If you do that. And this is true of the writer's room, it's true of everywhere. And yeah, I mean, for me, I just am always questioning, is this the best way? That's the way to do it is if you're always questioning if this is the best way. And then finally once you're like, this is the best way, then you shut the discussion down. And that's when Kevin starts complaining right after you've shut the discussion down.

[Aaron Korsh]

Here's a question though, about.

[Gabriel Macht]

Wait, I got some right here. I'm ready. Here we go. We need to talk about that. We're gonna talk about that can opener.

[Aaron Korsh]

I do wanna get to that can opener, but I wanna talk about resources for a second. Because what I've noticed now that I'm on another show decade plus later, there's a difference in the business. Like our resources are different. Yes. You had the budget on suits, which we've had some questions about, like how you were able to, you know, having clothes that are special, the getting the cars in that episode. Like actually how you spend your money when you're producing a first season of something. Because I think there's a more finite amount of money in that first season than maybe in later seasons. But also time, time being the most valuable commodity that you have when you're on set. Because what I found on suits, and we've been talking about this extensively, even today, which is how much room we made time wise for exploration, especially when Kevin was there. Right. There would be all this time to discover. And we especially needed that in a first season. But nowadays, you know, it's like we've entered, in my experience, my experience, you got two takes and we're moving on because we've got eight, nine pages to do today and we're not gonna go 30 minutes, 10 minutes, one minute over. But we went over time wise a lot the first season.

[Patrick Adams]

We went over a lot.

[Aaron Korsh]

You know, for a while it was more relaxed because it seemed like there was this decision that this is worth it. This three page scene in the second to last, in the penultimate episode of the season. We're gonna take an extra hour on because it deserves it. We're gonna spend that time. I don't know how much that time costs and who has to approve it and how that works, but we just had a different vibe on suits of like sometimes we needed a Kevin won or. Or a walk and talk because we had to make up for having spent time differently. And that actually ended up being great. Cause that walk and talking, I think.

[Gabriel Macht]

A lot of those are born out of the necessity to make it work within the timeframe.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah, but did you have more time or were you able to just get more money? How did you do it?

[Rick Hoffman]

This is what I would say. I mean, I'll go back to season one. We had a producer, Steve Wakefield, who was actually Kevin, was not an expert on the budget and time and that type of thing. So Steve Wakefield, what is seven plus four? But Steve.

[Patrick Adams]

Surfing.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yes, surfing.

[Gabriel Macht]

Speaking of Lee Marvin.

[Rick Hoffman]

But Steve Wakefield would call me and say if you want to make this episode on budget, under budget. And he would give me a list of things that I could. You can combine these two locations, you can do this, you can cut this. He would give me a menu and he would allow me to decide what it was that would make the show work. And he knew that to me it's much more important that I have room in the budget to go an hour over on a given day. Because the performance is everything. If you don't get the performance, what does it matter where your location is? So I would leave it to him. I wasn't worried about the specifics of how to get there, but to me you have a pot of money. It wasn't that we had more money and also we were only shooting seven day episodes, which is very cheap. So to go over a little bit on an episode that's only seven days versus to be on budget, that's an extra day or an extra half day, you're still cheaper in the end. And we didn't spend as much money on sets that year. We had much fewer sets. So the totality of the money was less and people weren't making as much money and it was all the things and things weren't as expensive. Tell me about it. So. But the point being, it was important to all of us that the performance was everything. And that's something that hasn't changed for me. Like it's what I'm struggling with this year. Sometimes I'm like, look, I don't. We were just going to build a big set for something in suits la. And I realized it was going to cost a lot of money. And I didn't care about this set, I don't care about what the set looks like. I mean, obviously I do, but. But if the performance, if that means we don't have enough money to ever go a minute over, the show is gonna be big. So you have to pick your spots. You have to. It's all money. It's all the resource is money. It's not time. You can go over if you have the money, but if you don't have the money, you can't go over. So you gotta find the money from other places. So that's how I view it.

[Aaron Korsh]

So sometimes do departments borrow from each other? Like, okay, we've got a ton of background in a scene that is black tie. We're gonna need more in the wardrobe department for this than we're gonna need in sets or we're gonna need in time or whatever. Like, would you sometimes rob Peter to pay Paul to get stuff to work?

[Rick Hoffman]

Yes. I mean.

[Aaron Korsh]

Cause that's the menu.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yes. I mean, to me, that's again, I'm not the one that's usually the one saying who should rob who. And departments are never gonna volunteer you money. But that's again, because I'm now in a first season of another show. I am constantly suggesting, like, look, just because a department has a budget for an episode doesn't mean they need to spend all that money for that episode because there's gonna be another one down the road where they're gonna need more extra. Yeah. So it's all, to me, a pot of money. I mean, here's another example. I remember at the end of season one, they were all. The studio was all upset that they had this like, box. They have these boxes they need to check. And one of their boxes was, how many pages is the script? And I was like, what does it matter how many pages my scripts are? And they're like, because it needs to be shorter. It just needs to be shorter to them. Because to them, a shorter script equals less money. And I was like, but we came in like a million dollars under budget. What does it matter how long? But it was a whole big thing. And they would be like, well, these other shows, their scripts are like five pages shorter than yours. And I'm like, yeah, because they write a one line thing that says they chase through Morocco and it takes three minutes. And our three minutes are spent on people walking and talking. It's not apples to apples. But we eventually got to an agreement with the studio that they sort of trusted us with. We're going to be responsible with your money. All of these, how long is your script things and how all this. They're just proxies for, are you going to. Are you wasting our money? Yeah. And it took a while for me to kind of get them to agree to that because they're very regimented and structured and that has not changed. Let me Say, but that's the idea is, for me, in total, you want to be under budget, but it doesn't matter if you're over budget in one area and you can make it up in a different area.

[Gabriel Macht]

And let me just put into that, like you described a certain circumstance, shooting on certain shows and feeling like, constricted and having. There are different cultures everywhere, so. And I think things have changed a lot as we've moved into streaming and other entities who are now in the process of making television, that there are kind of an old school. What you described is kind of.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah, but when you're directing your HBO stuff, they get like 15 days to shoot. Right, Right.

[Gabriel Macht]

But if they don't. Like, many of their shows are very cheap. But what it's. They want the creative process of Aaron Korsch to be not impeded, and they won't. They'll let you do what you're begging for, which is, give me the money and I'll fit it into the thing. Like, I'll figure out how to make this work. And there are positives and a lot of negatives to that as well. Like, there can be a lot of waste, but. But so the whole landscape of television, I think, has changed quite a bit since we did the pilot for. Yeah.

[Patrick Adams]

To come back to the season as a whole. You know, now we can digest it and we've seen it and it's, you know, part of television history now. But when you guys started it, we had no idea. Right. You didn't know what the end of the season was gonna be when we started shooting the beginning of it. I know you said you haven't watched it all, but you also have a photographic memory, so I'm sure you remember as much as we do who just watched it. But, like, what stands out to you? As if anything, as, like, surprises, I guess I want to know, like, how directions that it went in that you might not have expected. I'm curious, like, when. And maybe this is more of a question for Eren, but I think it gets into your head too, because it became partly your world. But, like, did the season end very similarly to how you would imagine it would? Were the characters the kind of people you kind of imagined they would be? After we shot the pilot or did through performance or through Kevin's direction, things change at all. Did you. When you got to the end of this first season, was there anything that sort of surprised you and that you wouldn't have imagined being the show, especially.

[Aaron Korsh]

From the characters, like, how you may have shifted the Writing and the storyline around what the actor was bringing. Like, when you had Rick bringing what he was bringing, did things shift? You know, those sorts of things, Especially by the point you were saying in episode seven was like, there was before and there was after.

[Gabriel Macht]

I think Gabriel or Harvey turned out to be quite different than I anticipated him being. You know, like, there is, like, a vulnerability to him that I never anticipated on the page, which had a lot to do with what Gabriel's personality. Like, he's so different from what Harvey was. You know what I mean? Mean, you know, Patrick. There's a funny. I put my. Because Patrick and I really had another kind of secret connection, I think. Yeah. And I put my name on Patrick's face in the pilot. Like, oh, did you identified? And then it happens again later. And I had nothing to do with it. So that was in the credits. And I didn't.

[Patrick Adams]

You never told me that. I didn't know that.

[Gabriel Macht]

And then when my aunt.

[Rick Hoffman]

I'm taking it out.

[Aaron Korsh]

I love that.

[Gabriel Macht]

When my aunt saw the show, she said, that guy really reminds me of you. Wow.

[Patrick Adams]

Oh, that's neat.

[Gabriel Macht]

In Detroit, you know, Mama Lane, she said, he really. He reminds me of you. Like, his energy, something. And I was like, yeah, I think we definitely bonded early on from the. I think I took both of you out in the hall for the chemistry, and I was like, really? Or maybe I took you separately or something.

[Aaron Korsh]

With Megan, you mean?

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, I said, I really want.

[Aaron Korsh]

During the chemistry read.

[Patrick Adams]

Yeah. I don't remember you took me out in the hall when I was reading with me.

[Gabriel Macht]

I think I was like, if there's any way you can make this work. But do we answer the question about.

[Rick Hoffman]

No, I got some answers to the surprising question. I mean, to me, it's less like where we got at the end of the season. To me, you know, the way that season developed was always a process of discovery. Right. I mean, we were discovering what the show was from a writing standpoint in the writer's room. It was just a process of discovery. And I don't know that I ever. I certainly couldn't have predicted where it was gonna go, but I wouldn't say I was, like, shocked either. Right. I had no notion of where it was gonna go, and it went where we wanted it to go or where we discovered it wanted to go. The things that just surprised me would be more. I could go back if I think about it enough and think of just all the tiny little moments of surprise that I loved so much. Like the things we're Talking about the little fun things throughout. I mean, certainly the Donna Lewis relationship, right? Like, it's not like I was like, oh, my God, this is shocking to me. But I hadn't envisioned it, right? So there. I remember writing the scene with the. You know, with the tickets. And basically I was writing that finale episode up in Toronto by myself. And all I needed was a scene where basically Donna needs something from Lewis. That's all I knew. And I was like, you know, let's do the. It was like the second half of the scene when Lewis asked for Donna. You know, it was like, to borrow.

[Aaron Korsh]

Donna, my soul hurts.

[Rick Hoffman]

Exactly. It was like the payoff of that. Now she needs something from him. And, you know, just a thousand little moments of interesting connection. I mean, look what I have thought. And now the season's blur for me. But, like, the Jessica Lewis relationship, you know, in the finale, when he's, like, gonna talk back to her, and he's like, yeah. I mean, like, if you cut together, you could probably cut together an hour of Jessica Lewis. And I don't think when people watch it, it might not be the thing they think of, but it's like, think about their relationship and the dynamic, just their physicality, all those things. So just there's a million things like that. A million Mike and Rachel moments. A million Harvey and Mike moments. It's just all the moments, you know, the speed dial 23 and the Stallone imitation and the Jordan thing, you know, I do. I also remember, you know, for me, being surprised. I remember. I think it might have been 109. You know, when I think, is that the Jimmy episode? I think it is. Right? Yeah. And just Jimmy, you know, Pooch hall and how strong. Oh, yeah. Rachel Lewis, when she comes back in and stands up to him. These are things we never could have anticipated. They're not some major story move that's like, oh, man, this is where it ended. But they're little moments of awesomeness. You know, when Mike sees Jessica in the elevator when he's stoned. Right. And then when Harvey figures it out and, you know, a million, obviously a million Donna Harvey moments. So to me, it's just the moments that I never would have thought of, of what we talked about, you know, when he asked Harvey why he hired him. Right. Like, these are things that are just like, super cool little moments that happened. It wasn't like some massive thing. It's just all. To me, what makes Suits special is not the plot of Suits. It is that the plot allows us to have these interactions. Yeah.

[Patrick Adams]

When in the watching of it, I felt. I would always refer to it. It felt like. Like it falling into gear. Like you could feel the show. You'd be watching an episode and be like, okay, we're kind of doing suits here, and we're kind of doing it. And then you'd get to a scene, I think, like the ones you're talking about, where something just falls in and you feel the machine, like, lurch forward and it has power. And you suddenly figured out. And it's so exciting in the first season because it's all new. It's never happened before. And you can feel it. You can go, that's the show. What's the one. The great scene between you and Lewis and Harvey. That one that we went back and.

[Aaron Korsh]

Talked about that Kevin directed, but we put it back in after we were shooting seven you wrote was the My soul hurts. Now it's the My soul hurts scene.

[Patrick Adams]

I mean, something happens in that scene where you're like, we just discovered that we hadn't yet had before. This interaction between you and Lewis and Harvey in the background, allowing him to be silly. Like there was just a perfectly timed. And to learn that you came in and shot that scene was really interesting.

[Aaron Korsh]

Do you remember shooting that scene, Kevin? You don't remember that?

[Rick Hoffman]

No, I remember. I think you called me and we talked about it on the phone recently put in here. And I remember that the episode was a little short, so we had to write a scene. So this is what I'm saying. Sometimes the episode's short. So you're gonna write a scene. It's not a plot scene, right? Cause your plot's already sort of set. So you just have fun, right? It's just a fun scene. And that's what I mean about the ballet ticket scene. It would be easy to just skip the part where. Where you go and try to. You don't have. We didn't have to have that ballet scene. Right? There was nothing about that scene. It was necessary. It didn't advance the plot. We could have just said Donna as Lewis for somebody. But it was great, right? So. And, you know, here's another moment from one. Cause, look, I think 107 is when it hit the other gear. But that's not to say there are infinity moments in the pilot and in two and three. And one of the ones I remember is it's when Lewis says he cuts a pony from the herd. And then you get stoned later in the episode. And he's like, did he give you the line about the Pony. And I believe you're high in that episode, and you're like, pony. Right. And you're laughing, and those are like. I love those things. Right. Those moments stand out to me because they're just so real. And the way Gabriel was in that scene, he. He got pissed. Harvey got pissed. And you're right. Harvey was. Gabriel's more vulnerable than Harvey was on the page. And I think because he was. That's why Suits is successful. Right. If he was just a straight up arrogant.

[Aaron Korsh]

Absolutely.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yeah. But in that scene, he was hard on Mike, and it was really like, whoa, this guy is not just your friend. Right. And it's just fascinating. Yeah.

[Gabriel Macht]

There are all these moments. There's a moment that when he says, do I look like a pimp? And then he gives that look after it, and you're like, this dude is faking the funk. Like, he's totally created this whole caricature in the story, in the reality. In the reality of his character. Like, he goes home and he's like. Puts on a. One of those bodysuit sleepy things that you sleep in. What is it called?

[Aaron Korsh]

Like, a shrugie or something?

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah, just like. And he does, like, he'd. Ugh. Boots.

[Rick Hoffman]

And when he asked, do I look like a pimp? He asked Donna. That's in still, right?

[Gabriel Macht]

That's in it.

[Rick Hoffman]

So I remember the reason I wrote that was. Is because Harvey is this harsh guy, and Donna's the softened him. Well, Donna softened him. He shared his vulnerability with Donna. He was not afraid to do that. Donna, the. I don't appreciate limitations being placed on my beauty. Like, those are things that. They're just the special moments of the whole. I didn't mention the relationship of Jessica and Harvey, which is. I mean, in the spine of Suits, it's such a pivotal, important relationship. And I even think in that early. I think it was the first episode back 102 that you directed when Jessica. When he's like. When she says she is the firm. Right. And he realizes, either way, you win. You knew that the whole time. And she's like, am I smart enough to do that? And their relationship is so good because Harvey is this like. Like, basically, he's a superhero. But she is smarter than him and his boss. And yet they also respect each other. And his mentor and his mentor. All of the above.

[Aaron Korsh]

The person who paid for law school.

[Rick Hoffman]

Yep.

[Patrick Adams]

She's his Harvey.

[Aaron Korsh]

Yeah.

[Rick Hoffman]

She is his Harvey. Yes. And even though Cameron Dennis was his Harvey in a different way, and that's why it's interesting when she you know, gets involved in that Cameron Dennis thing and Donna help. Exactly. So but my point being, it's all the surprising thing, and this is what you were saying about it being new. It's all the relationships between all the characters that you get to explore and even her relationship, her triangle of Harvey, Lewis and her. Right. Like she's mom and Harvey's a favorite and Lewis is not like that's it. That's their. It never changes. Right. But she doesn't not love Lewis, but she can never love him enough.

[Aaron Korsh]

Right, right, right.

[Rick Hoffman]

And it's just interesting, the mother wound as you explore. And I know it's later, it's not first season, but like, you know, when you and Lewis have the, you know, when you get hit and he's like gently putting the arnica on you, it's such a tender thing. And you guys, I think you talk about Harvey with Superman and all this stuff that might be a different scene in the fire room, but, but it's seeing these characters explore and come together with each other. That's what was surprising to me. How satisfying.

[Gabriel Macht]

Yeah. My global answer is like, I didn't know it was going to be that good. So I mean, I think it just really was elevated and it was may delusionally so because I really thought it was super good and, and was very defensive about how good I thought it was. The whole se. You know, the whole, the whole show. It's kind of like eight is Enough or Family or the Waltons or any of those shows. I mean, this is where he.

[Rick Hoffman]

No one is gonna get any references.

[Patrick Adams]

Hi everyone. Thanks for listening. So this conversation with Aaron and Kevin was such a great time and we covered so many essential suits topics that we really didn't feel like cutting any of it short. So we decided this conversation is going to be a two parter. So please come back next week where we'll have more time with Kevin and Aaron. We're going to hear both of their theories on the can opener. We'll discuss Mike's bike helmet and Aaron shares his reaction to the first episode of Suits la. While Kevin is going to tell us a story of casting Megan as Rachel Zane. Thank you all for listening. Thank you again to Kevin Bray and Aaron Korsh. So great to have you in the studio and we'll see you next week. We love our listeners and we love to hear from you. So if you have any questions at all, please email us@ Sidebar podcasteriusxm.com and if you send us a question as a voice memo. We may even play it on the show.

[Aaron Korsh]

And if you can, please make sure to leave a review wherever you listen. It's a great way to support our show.

[Sarah Rafferty]

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