Suits, while always beloved by a passionate group of fans, has experienced a massive resurgence. The stars of the show have felt the seismic shift leading co-stars Sarah Rafferty and Patrick J. Adams to start a rewatch podcast called “Sidebar—a must-listen for fans. We caught up with Rafferty ahead of the launch to chat all things Suits, nostalgia, beauty hacks and new projects.
Obviously, Suits has had a huge resurgence, but what made you feel like now was the right time to start a rewatch podcast?
“Well, in addition to the resurgence, I think it had a lot to do with having a little bit of time away from the show and kind of being in conversation. It was Patrick’s idea. He called me up and said, ‘Should we be thinking about doing a thing like this?’ this was like three years ago, and e just started to think about how it would be a really great way to process this kind of whirlwind chapter in our life because what I’ve really found is that it was incredibly hard to be present in that because of the pace of the show and because for me I was having kids and we were living in two places, I was putting them in different schools.
There was a lot of chaos that came with my life at that time, but also with the schedule of doing a TV show. I felt like, gosh, there’s so much I missed, so much I didn’t know. Like, why did they pick that painting or how did they get that song, or how did they edit that together? What were the writers thinking? How did they do this development? You’re just a very curious person, once you have a little bit of distance and think how did you actually do all that?
Being in conversation is a great way to metabolize how grateful you are for a thing. The opportunity to connect with the people that we love who were in front of and behind the camera, was also just a really great reason to do a podcast. Probably most of all, I would say, meeting fans out in the world and receiving their questions and their feedback about what the show meant to them at a certain time in their lives made us want to have a way of being more engaged with the people who viewed it, and this seemed like a kind of direct line to that connection.”
Working on a podcast is so different from being on a TV show—how are you enjoying it?
“It’s totally different because you’re not playing a character—there’s not a script. It’s so fun, and it’s so fun to be doing it with Patrick. Patrick is, I’ve always said this about him, always inviting me on an adventure, whether it’s ‘Hey, bring the family up north and come to the lake with us’ or ‘Come to this place where we’re camping out.’ You know, those kinds of adventures. It’s just very normal for me to be like, ‘Oh, we’re going on an adventure. Let’s go. I’ll go. Don’t make me bungee jump. I’m not getting back on the back of the motorcycle, but adventure? Yes, tell me what time. I’ll be there.’ Patrick is just that person.
I’m really excited about the podcast. I think I love this medium of podcasting because, for me in my life, when I’m going through the day-to-day stuff, I feel companioned by the people that I’m listening to. Sometimes I’m getting informed, sometimes I’m laughing, whatever it is that I need in that moment. My hope is that the Suits viewers can come take this journey with us in a really intimate way, now that we’re the viewers too, and that we can feel a sense of community and companionship in that together.
I’m really looking forward to how that community grows and the feedback we get and the different roads that might lead us down. Receiving questions from the viewer always opens up a conversation that maybe we weren’t expecting to have. The questions are so beautiful and interesting and fun and thoughtful and thought-provoking.”
What’s the biggest lesson you learned from Donna?
“I loved that Donna led with her heart and that she never apologized for who she is, right? She, she had that quote, ‘I’m not apologizing for who I am,’ but I do really think I learned a lot from that because once they wrote that line in I was like, that’s this woman’s mantra, that is a defining statement of who she is. To take some of that on in my life, to take even 10 percent of that on, to be more comfortable, more grounded, more vulnerable, honest, authentic, all those things, that was a huge lesson.
I was at a fan convention two weeks ago, and we were taking pictures, and she said ‘sorry’ a few times. Then I just sort of stopped, and I was like, ‘You don’t have to apologize.’ Take up your space. Take up your time. This is your time. And I’m the person who needed that lesson.”
What can fans expect to get insight on that they wouldn’t have known before?
“Big picture, small picture, minutiae, anything that comes up. Like a fan asked, ‘In this scene, in this episode, there’s this painting—can you tell me about this painting?’ And then we got into a conversation, and I reached out to Aaron [Korsh]. Aaron told his story with it. He mentioned one of our producers. So then I reached out to that producer. So there’s that kind of conversation.
There’s also what Patrick was just talking about on Instagram Live, which is kind of what naturally comes up for us, which is like, ‘Wow, I was going through this thing at that time’ or ‘I’m triggered by that’ or whatever it is.
I’m used to always just being really hard on myself. I think people are very used to being hard on themselves, maybe quietly inside. I was surprised that when being confronted with my younger self an empathy came up from me. And I was like, ‘Oh, that girl. She had a lot on her plate.’ That was after many failed pilots and thinking, ‘Is this ever going to happen,’ having a child, and getting pregnant with another one, and moving around. I had a little bit of empathy, there was a lot going on at that time and that was kind of an amazing discovery. It’s amazing to be able to look back on another chapter in life with video.”
Did it make you nostalgic for that time?
“Well, it’s all a continuum, right? It’s really lovely to look back and understand how it formed the present and to kind of have a bigger understanding of what got me there. It’s also great to have an opportunity to watch the show together because there are so many scenes we’re not in. There are so many things going on that we don’t get to see. So, to see these people and their work and to just be so thrilled about it is amazing.
The other day, I was watching an episode, and took a screen grab, and sent it to Gina Torres. We were chatting about it, and she goes, ‘You know, I can just come meet you there at the studio, right?’ Then she met us over at the studio, and we talked about it on the air. We took sort of the private conversation over to SiriusXM and had it together because it’s so great to have these people that we treasure and then really have an opportunity to celebrate them, to celebrate these comments, to celebrate their work and their dreams.”
Your most recent show is My Life With the Walter Boys. What have you learned about motherhood from playing Katherine Walter?
“Let’s think about this for a second because Katherine Walter has so many children. So I think somebody who has that big a life, and with that many children, there’s a piece of you that has to have tremendous faith that the environment you’re building is good—the space in which your family exists, their ties to each other—because you can’t be everything to everybody, right? There’s not enough of you. So I think to just lead with the heart, have a certain amount of faith that your children also have their own angels, and they have each other, which is really important, that you can trust that the unit that they are in is nurturing them.”
Since we’re a beauty publication I have to ask—do you have any fun beauty hacks to share?
“Recently, I’ve been getting in the car on my way to work in Calgary, and I’ve been wearing a red light mask like wrapped around my head. We’re lucky enough to be driven to work, and I always get in, and I put that on. Then a dermatologist was, like, ‘You can put that on your head too for hair growth.’ That’s my latest hot tip. I obsess over hats and SPF, as you can probably imagine. I think makeup for redheads is a totally different thing, so it’s kind of niche in the recommendations that I would have.”
