Suits creator says don't hold your breath for more Suits, Suits heads

Look, at this point, you don’t need us to tell you that Suits is big right now. You’re probably watching Suits right now, skimming this article while Mike and Harvey have some of their patented Suits-type banter in the background. (Writs? They’re probably talking about writs. Habeas corpus presumably figures. Dockets for days.) The point is, Suits is now the second-most streamed TV show basically ever, trailing only behind Netflix’s Stranger Things, an actual made-for-streaming show, in Nielsen’s rankings of these things. It is Suits’ world, and we’re just living in it.

None of which, though, is apparently going to lead to any more Suits getting made. That’s per a new THR interview with series creator Aaron Korsh, who made it clear that, actually, figuring out what happens next on Suits is kind of hard—it’s why he had a whole team of WGA writers to help him do it—and he’s not sitting on some secret store of Suits ideas just waiting to be unleashed once Hollywood’s current double strike is over.

Here’s Korsh: “When fans ask me, like, ‘What do you think Harvey and Mike are up to in Seattle?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know!’ It’s really hard to come up with this stuff, that’s why you have a writers room — like, that’s why we’re on strike, so I don’t have to by myself!” (Korsh also noted that USA, which ran Suits for 9 seasons before it became a certified streaming phenomenon, gave him a lot of runway to finish the show on, so it’s not like he’s over-brimming with unused Suits plans.)

Elsewhere in the interview, Korsh puts forward his own theories for why the show has taken off right now (while also trying to remind the world at large that it was, y’know, a hit at the time, too), saying a lot of it had to do with a sudden surge of popularity on TikTok. (He also alludes to Meghan Markle, who departed the series for duchess reasons in 2018).

I think why people are tuning into it is a combination of that TikTok thing, there’s no doubt that there’s some curiosity about Meghan [Markle], and then Netflix knows how to entice you to watch a television show and then that builds on itself. Now, the reason I think people are responding to it? I don’t think it’s totally different from how I loved Ted Lasso when it came out in the pandemic. I think with the characters in Suits, people either see themselves in someone and/or see who they wish they were, and it also has an inherent optimism to it, even though sad things do happen. It’s funny, I took a lot of heat over the years whenever something bad would happen to someone on the show, people really get upset about it. But in this period of time in the world, I think the characters and the underlying base optimism are why people are connecting to the show, and then maybe some of it is tonal because it has drama but also it has humor.

As for the money stuff, Korsh also differed gently on an idea floated in a recent L.A. Times piece by series writer Ethan Drogin, who noted that the $259 per quarter he gets for writing an episode of streaming’s second-most popular show was emblematic of the current issues the WGA is striking over. Here’s Korsh:

I believe Suits is an example of the gains of the 2007 strike in terms of residuals and not an example of the shortcomings of where we are now. And the reason I think that is because, first of all, an episode of Suits is worth approximately $70,000 in residuals so far, as best as I can figure out, and that number is nowhere near, in my estimation, finished growing. As opposed to if Suits were written for Netflix, and then I think the number would be under $10,000 and would probably never grow much above that.

So, I’m 1,000 percent supportive of my guild; there needs to be an overhaul to the way writers are compensated because residuals are vanishing when you make shows for streamers. But I’ll say this: I wrote one episode of Everybody Loves Raymond when I was a writers assistant and it was like 20 years ago, and I think I’ve made about $90,000 in residuals from it, and I still make, maybe, $3,000 to $4,000 a year. And I’m very pleased with that and I think Suits is much closer to that than it is to, say, any show that was made for a streamer… I am a profit participant in the show, and I don’t think anybody needs to lose one second of sleep over how much money I’m making from Suits. (Laughs.)