Sarah Rafferty talks getting Meghan Markle on ‘Suits’ rewatch podcast: ‘Everybody’s invited’

Sarah Rafferty and Patrick J. Adams are getting the Suits gang back together again for their rewatch podcast — and yes, costar Meghan Markle is on their dream guest list.

“Everybody’s invited, and everybody has been so supportive,” Rafferty tells Entertainment Weekly when asked if the Duchess of Sussex has been invited as a guest on SiriusXM’s Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast. “It’s amazing. I’ve just been texting one of our directors, Mike Smith, Rachael Harris had some comments on our Instagram Live this morning, cannot wait for Sheila Sazs to be introduced into the show. I can’t wait to talk to Max Beesley and all the British actors that we had.”

Hosted by Adams and Rafferty, the new podcast features the first time the two actors have watched the show on which they starred as Mike Ross and Donna Paulsen. They’ll recap episodes and share their experiences from filming the series, as well as interview fellow cast and crew (first guests include Gina Torres, who played Jessica Pearson, and showrunner Aaron Korsh).

Rafferty is most excited to bring on voices from every department that worked behind the scenes in wardrobe, set design, and more. “Everybody’s a storyteller from a different angle, and it takes so many people to make a show,” she says. “I think that that’s really fascinating. There’s so many conversations to be had, like, ‘How did you choose that song?’ All that stuff.”

USA Network’s Suits starred Adams as conman-turned-lawyer Mike Ross, who became the young protégé to Gabriel Macht‘s shark Harvey Specter at a top NYC firm. The legal drama ran from 2011 to 2019 and also starred Rick Hoffman and Markle (before she married Prince Harrry and became the Duchess of Sussex). The series recently enjoyed a viral resurgence in 2023 when the first eight seasons became available to stream on Netflix (the ninth and final season — as well as short-lived spinoff Pearson — is only available on Peacock), where it unexpectedly broke streaming records and topped Nielsen’s streaming charts for months on end. A new spinoff, Suits: L.A., is currently in production.

“We were on strike when we had that resurgence, and it was like, ‘What does this mean?’ You can’t really get your head around it,” Rafferty says. “Which is sort of one of the reasons why we followed through on the idea of a podcast, because it’s an opportunity to kind of make meaning of what the show has meant to everybody involved and the viewers.”

She started to recognize the new popularity of Suits when people were approaching her in public to talk about the show in America, because that had previously only happened in Canada where they filmed the series. “That’s the real shift,” she says. “One of the most fun approaches was I was at a theme park with my kids, and they were going to get their picture taken with one of the Trolls, Poppy, and the actor inside the costume can’t talk.”

Rafferty laughs as she adds, “She did so much with her giant puffy hands. She completely signed like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re on Suits!’ Then she started doing the Donna walk, and she was doing the hearts. It was the funniest interaction that I have ever had, because she was in that suit and we were basically silent.”

Rafferty reveals that Adams actually had the idea to watch Suits for the first time and record a podcast about it way before the resurgence. “It was during the pandemic that he came up with it,” she says. “And then obviously during the strike when the resurgence happened, that kind of sped up our conversation around it.”

She says she never watched the show when it was filming and airing because it was a “busy, crazy, chaotic, hectic time” in her life. “I was having my kids, we were living in Toronto and in L.A., we were moving back and forth, we were doing the TV show,” Rafferty explains. “I had never stopped and processed it and been present to it. And so that by the time nine years had passed, I was like, ‘Did I miss it?'”

Now that she’s finally watching Suits, she’s “fangirling” over it. “There’s so many pieces that I missed because we were in the midst of shooting it,” Rafferty says. “We didn’t know what the needle drops were going to be — we were on set. There’s so much to talk about, and I think that’s why it’s so fun to be doing a podcast about it.”

The podcast is only a few episodes in, but she’s already been having a blast watching episodes and texting her costars about it — accidentally forgetting that those conversations should be saved to record on the podcast.

“I took a screen grab while I was watching it, and I texted it to Gina and she responded, and then I started asking her questions,” Rafferty says. “‘Wait, where did you shoot that? Do you remember that day?’ All the things that you would naturally ask about. I mean, we’re doing this all through text and she’s like, ‘You know, honey, I can just come meet you at the studio. We can do this in front of some microphones.’ And so a couple days later she is sitting with Patrick and I having this amazing conversation. We’re excited to do that with everybody who was involved.”

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But she’s already been struggling with the No. 1 issue people face while binge-watching a show with someone else — waiting to watch the next episode with Adams.

“We get to the end of an episode and then we have to stop because we have to go talk about it,” she says. “Patrick and I have both talked about how we just want to go play next, next, next, next, next. And I haven’t totally told him, but I have kind of gone 10 to 15 minutes into the next one because I kind of can’t help myself.”

Sounds like something Donna would do.