It seems Meghan Markle left quite an impression on her Suits co-star, Patrick J. Adams, because he knew she was going to make it big from the very first time they met. During the second episode of Adams and co-star Sarah Rafferty’s (who played Donna Paulson on the hit show) new podcast, “Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast,” Adams recalled working with Markle for the first time and their immediate chemistry.
“It was pretty clear, if I remember correctly, that she was going to get the part from the minute we did the chemistry read,” Adams remembered. “It was just so much easier than it was with anybody else.”
When Rafferty asked Adams about his first encounter with Markle, the actor revealed that the two had actually shot a different pilot together before Suits that never took off.
“Meghan and I had done a pilot before, a terrible, terrible pilot together,” he told Rafferty. “I won’t even say the name of it, but you can IMDb it. There was a setting up of a romantic relationship in the pilot. And then, we never saw each other again. The pilot failed. It was terrible and went away. And so we had never seen each other nor spoken to each other again.”
When they reunited at the Suits casting call for a chemistry read (Adams was the first character to be cast), the familiarity between them calmed their nerves.
“I think just knowing each other and getting to calm down and not have those nerves of just getting to know one another really helped that chemistry read,” he said.
Markle and Adams’s chemistry read was a scene that fans will be familiar with: “It was this scene and the next one where she walks Mike through the whole office,” he shared. “She crushed it and she crushes it in the show.”
The show ran from 2011 to 2019, though Markle left the series shortly after meeting Prince Harry. The show had a resurgence after being released on Netflix during the SAG-Aftra and Writer’s Guild strikes.