When Harvey, in the pilot, says [to Mike], “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” that’s his biggest fear, that he’s not really as smart as he thinks he is. So that kind of comes from my biggest fear. Growing up I had that kind of past.
I ended up going to a good school and I did work on Wall Street. Everybody at that first firm that I worked at, it wasn’t like a dictate, but everybody either went to Harvard, Yale or Wharton. The Harvard guys hired Harvard guys, the Yale guys hired Yale guys, and Wharton guys hired Wharton guys.
In addition to that I – since this call is being taped – I’m going to say I may or may not have smoked a lot of pot in my life. But, you know, I was like smoking pot while I was working there and I always felt… I felt like a fraud.
Now obviously I went to Wharton and I graduated, but the Mike character is based on feelings that I had of feeling like a fraud and using drugs and just being dissatisfied with my situation in spite of being able, outwardly, to do well and keep up the job so to speak.
So that’s where the Mike character was born. Now I feel like – I don’t know that I have the empathy that Mike does, but we grew up in a town that was just outside Philadelphia, and it was all different socioeconomic backgrounds and all different [kids].
And you just weren’t allowed to get away with being too above people. You were just living with a lot of different people of all kinds. And it kind of taught me that when you have a person in front of [you], they’re a person. They’re not above you. They’re not beneath you. They’re just another person, so you relate to them.
So I think that’s where Mike’s empathy comes from. But we amped that up because… if you’re going to have someone that’s cocky, it helps that they also care about other people.
So that’s where [Mike] basically came from. And I’ll just say, when I first started working on Wall Street I was 21. I had this mentor Harvey, and to me everything was so important back then. Like I was only 21 but it’s your first job and it seems so important. And that’s what we try to imbue, you know, this world through Mike’s eyes with that exaggerated sense of how important everything is.
Is there a comparison between “Suits” and “Franklin & Bash,” for the chemistry that the main characters have?
Well, I have only seen the first episode of “Franklin & Bash.” I actually interviewed to write on that show and I didn’t get the job. But I think it is similar in the sense that it’s got two young lawyers that get along well together.
I think the difference between “Franklin & Bash,” this is according to what they told me when I interviewed, was they look at that show as a comedy. And I think we look at “Suits” like it’s a drama. We try to make it funny but we really do think of it as a drama first and a comedy second. And therefore I think our story lines tend to be a little bit more dramatic, a little more serious and [we] let the comedy kind of play where it can.
So that’s the main difference. I think it’s basically a story about the redemption, the possibility of redemption, in this young character, Mike, told through this relationship mainly with Harvey, especially in the first season. It becomes more of an ensemble I think in the second season. And at the core of the show to me is the loyalty these two guys have and how it grows between each other. And then as things change it tests other people’s loyalties.
Is there any chance that you could use some real cases on “Suits” that are ripped from the headlines?
Oh, no. We try not to use real cases just because my rule has always been it doesn’t have to be real, it just has to seem real, because sometimes the way it would be in reality is just not as interesting or exciting. So we try to stay away from real cases. Sometimes obviously we’ll know about a case or about something that will inspire us to use a little piece of something. But for the most part we just make them up.
What about “Suits” do you think that people can relate to? What do you think people like most about the show?
I think what people tend to like the banter of most of the characters, but in particular Mike with Harvey. And then as the show grows people seem to love Donna, and they root for Mike and Rachel and Jenny and [want] to see who he’s going to end up with.
I think people love Harvey. You know, I think everyone seems to find a character… that they relate to and that they see some part of themselves in. I think that’s probably the success of the show.
Looking back on season one, what were some of the things that you wanted to improve upon or do differently in season two? And have you had the chance to do that so far this season?
Well, when I originally wrote the pilot they were not lawyers, they were investment bankers. And it was intended to be much more, for lack of a better word, of a serialized drama. It wasn’t going to be a case-of-the-week type show. It’s very difficult to make [serialized dramas] on TV these days, and USA, at the time, did not do that. They needed a procedural element, a case-of-the-week that could be closed ended.
So that was the impetus for making them lawyers. And in the first season I think we were encouraged to play the procedural element and what I’ll call the puppy-of-the-week. That’s kind of how they think about it sometimes. So the outside cases were much larger in scope and therefore each episode was more of a stand-alone episode. There were certainly serialized elements to it but less so.
And in the second season what we wanted to do, and with the network’s encouragement, was to diminish the procedural aspect. Not to make it go away, but to change the percentage so to speak. And I think we’ve been able to do that, [and have] done a good job with doing that.
And therefore we’re able to kind of dwell on the character dynamics a little bit more.
Yeah. That’s something I really love about the show – there’s much more focus on the characters rather than the cases. I think that really helps the show be as great as it is and was a great decision by you and the writers, to take it in that direction.
I appreciate that. And I’ll give the network credit. I mean they kind of recognized that, and I had always initially wanted to do that, but we had gone away from that a little bit in the first season. They still really allowed us to do a lot of character stuff. But in the second season they actually encouraged us to do it and hopefully it’ll be successful.
Jessica, Rachel and Donna are all really strong female characters. Was it important to you to create a number of strong female roles to balance out the machismo of some of the male lawyers at Pearson Hardman, in particular, Harvey himself?
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