Meghan Markle “crushed” her chemistry read with Patrick J. Adams and it was immediately “pretty clear that she was gonna get the part,” her Suits co-star said.
Meghan and Adams have an on screen romance in the show, meaning it was important that the pair had a connection on camera.
And Adams, who played lawyer Mike Ross, said during an episode of Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast that she was immediately comfortable and at ease during the audition.
George Pimentel/WireImage
“So, Meghan and I had done a pilot before—a terrible, terrible pilot together,” Adams said, referencing failed 2008 show Good Behavior.
“There was a setting up of a romantic relationship in the pilot of that particular pilot too.
“And then we never saw each other again, the pilot failed, it was terrible, and it went away. And so we had never seen each other nor spoken to each other again.”
Adams later auditioned to play Mike Ross in Suits, got the part and was then included in the audition process for the role of Rachel Zane, acting out a scene from the show with different candidates.
“So, when I went in to do the chemistry reads with Rachel, she [Meghan] was right there,” he said. “And she said ‘hi.’ And I went, ‘oh my god, so good to see you.’
“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.
“And it was just pretty clear that we had an easy going thing when we went into that room. And it was pretty clear that she was gonna get the part from the minute we did the chemistry read. It was just so much easier than it was with anybody else.”
Adams co-hosts the podcast alongside Sarah Rafferty, who played Donna in the show. Rafferty noted the chemistry read was “a bear of an audition scene.”
It was Meghan’s first scene in the show, in which Ross blurts out that she’s pretty, denies hitting on her and Zane then puts him in place. It ends with Ross whispering “I love you.”
“It’s a big one,” Adams replied. “And she crushed it and she crushes it in the show.”
Such was their chemistry in fact that one particularly racy scene made startling viewing for Prince Harry in the early days of their relationship.
“I’d made the mistake of googling and watching some of her love scenes online,” he wrote in his book Spare. “I’d witnessed her and a castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room…It would take electric-shock therapy to get those images out of my head. I didn’t need to see such things live.”
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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