Meghan Markle Has ‘No Idea’ Why You’re All Watching ‘Suits’ Either
Noted former podcast host Meghan Markle shared her awe at the surprising surge in popularity her old show, Suits, has enjoyed this year.
The Duchess of Sussex was asked about the renewed popularity of the legal drama at Variety’s “Power of Women” event on Thursday, Nov. 17. “Isn’t that wild?” Markle said, adding she had “no idea” what was prompting people to return to the legal drama.
“It was great to work on, such a great cast and crew,” Markle continued. “We had a really fun time. I was on it for seven seasons, so quite a bit. But it’s hard to find a show you can binge-watch that many episodes of these days, so that could have something to do with it. But good shows are everlasting.”
Suits ran for nine seasons on USA, debuting in 2011 and wrapping in 2019. Markle appeared on the first seven seasons of the show, playing Rachel Zane, a legal nepo baby (so to speak) who first works as a paralegal before getting a law degree and becoming an associate. Markle left the series after the seventh season following the little business of her engagement to Prince Harry.
To put some numbers on the Suits resurgence, as of yesterday, the show has spent 18 consecutive weeks on the Nielsen Streaming Top 10, many of which were at Number One (it only recently lost the top spot to Fall of the House of Usher). To date, the series has also crossed the 45 billion minutes streamed mark on Netflix and Peacock combined.
Writing about the Suits-assance for Rolling Stone this summer, TV critic Alan Sepinwall suggested the series — like other easy-going, uplifting shows that aired on USA during the “Blue Skies” era — was “a perfect second-screen experience, allowing viewers to “easily get other things done” while watching the show.
He continued: “There is always a demand for this kind of pleasant, passive viewing experience, and at times more demand than the industry is willing to supply. Most of Netflix’s original series are intensely serialized, demanding your attention from one plot point to the next, whether or not the individual points are interesting. Suits is very lightly serialized… but a whole lot of it is the sort of Case of the Week stuff TV has been doing since the medium existed. It’s the sort of series Netflix has largely resisted making for itself, but that its subscribers clearly crave.”