Sarah Rafferty only wants the best for her Suits’ character’s fictional romance with Gabriel Macht’s Harvey Specter.
Rafferty, who played Donna Paulson on the hit show, reunited with fellow Suits stars Patrick J. Adams, Dule Hill and Amanda Schull at the 2024 ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas, and sat down with ET’s Cassie DiLaura on Sunday to talk about the massive resurgence in the show’s popularity, and where they feel their characters would be today.
For Rafferty, the question specifically was where would “Darvey” — the couple name for Donna and Harvey — would be five years after the show ended.
“That’s such a good question for [Suits creator] Aaron Korsh,” Rafferty said with a laugh. “Where would Darvey be right now? They’d be happy.”
Sarah Rafferty as Donna Paulsen, Gabriel Macht as Harvey Specter in ‘Suits’ – Shane Mahood/USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
The original show — which also starred Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman, Katherine Heigl and Meghan Markle — came to an end in September 2019 after an eight-year run on USA Network. It followed a group of lawyers, paralegals and others in the field on a day-to-day basis at an NYC-based firm.
After wrapping up the series the year before the coronavirus pandemic began, the show picked up renewed interest during lockdown and steadily developed a resurgence in popularity and was the most streamed show of 2023.
“My daughter has watched the show, and her friends, ’cause she’s in university,” Hill shared. “So she was at college when all the resurgence was happening.”
“She hasn’t watched the whole thing, her schedule is busier than anybody in the family,” Hill added. “[But] thankfully she already thinks that I’m a cool dad, and this just adds to it.”
In light of this new interest and growing fanbase, Rafferty and Adams have teamed up for Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast, where they will watch episodes and reflect on the experience of making the show.
Sharing a message to the fans, Adams expressed, “I just want to say thank you again.”
“We’re watching it for this podcast, and I have a new appreciation, not just for the fan base but for the work itself in the show, and how everyone in it is so breath-takingly good,” Adams praised. “The more that we hear from the fans, the more that we talk to them, we’re really excited to have them be a part of our podcast, engaging with them, getting their voices and getting their questions. So I just hope that they reach out to us and continue to engage in the show and continue to keep watching it.”
For all the cast members, it seems being a part of the beloved series was a unique and special experience.
“There’s something so magical about the sense of belonging that you get to have,” Rafferty recalled. “We all did a million pilots. And there was all that guesting on other people’s shows, and I always dreamed of having a place that felt like home. And then I almost couldn’t believe it when Suits happened.”
Echoing this sentiment, Adams explained how being part of such a tight-knit cast is “sort of indescribable, to be honest.”
“It’s a level of intimacy and friendship and family that I had never experienced outside of my own family,” Adams said. “You can finish each other’s sentences. You can tell you know each other, you know how to push each other’s buttons and you know how to make each other laugh and you know how to comfort each other.”
And making the experience even better, in the wake of the show’s resurgence, is the knowledge that it’s something of a comfort-watch for a lot of people.
“We have this beautiful opportunity as actors to touch the lives of people we may never meet,” Schull shared. “And what gift [it is] to have been on a show that… could help people out during a time when some people were struggling, over the last couple of years. And to bring some levity into someone’s living room. That’s a real honor.”
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