‘Suits’ star Gabriel Macht is ‘sorry’ that the show inspired fans to go to law school

Harvey Specter isn’t one for apologies, but Gabriel Macht feels differently.

The Suits star has admitted that he apologizes to fans all the time — specifically when they say that the legal drama inspired them to make a major life choice.

“There are so many kids that have gone to law school because of the show,” Macht recently told PEOPLE. “Because they think it’s fast-moving, there’s family, there’s loyalties, it’s cool, it’s slick. People are witty. There’s a lot of drama, all this kind of stuff.”

But while that glamorous, fast-paced, drama-filled world is certainly the status quo on Suits, Macht recognizes that reality is very different. There are far fewer dramatic reveals and slow-burn romances, which means there’s only one thing he can say to the fans who let Harvey guide their careers.

“When people come up to me and they’re like, ‘I went to law school because of you,’ I always apologize profusely,” Macht shared. He tells them, “I’m sorry. If you like to read, that is great — because you’re going to sit with a book for hours.”

Initially debuting in 2011, Suits featured Macht as legal shark Harvey Specter, who takes brilliant college dropout Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) under his wing at his prestigious law firm. In the show’s defense, that conceit is itself a red flag, warning viewers not to take inspiration from its morally questionable characters. Together, Mike and Harvey work on closing cases while bending the law themselves, as they attempt to hide the fact that Mike is not the Harvard-educated lawyer he claims to be.

While the series certainly garnered an audience in its heyday, it later multiplied that fanbase in 2023 — four years after it ended — when it became available to stream on Netflix and smashed streaming records for months on end (Nielsen reported U.S. viewers watched 57.7 billion minutes in 2023).

“The thing about this show… it’s commitment,” Macht said, reflecting on the dedicated fanbase. “People have watched 134 episodes, which is our nine seasons. They’ve watched it multiple times. And so for me, that is fanatical a little bit.”

He continued, “Anybody who’s watched it even once to me it’s like, ‘Oh wow, that’s cool. You were into it, great. You got a lot of time on your hands.’ But for the people that have watched it twice, and five times and 15 times… I met a guy who watched it 15 times. And I was like, ‘All right, well we’re going to take a picture together where you’re in that corner and I’m in this corner.'”

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The powers that be were quick to make use of that resurgence, using Suits’ newfound momentum to launch the spinoff series, Suits LA. Starring Arrow alum  Stephen Amell as former New York lawyer Ted Black, the sequel show takes its audience to Los Angeles, where Ted launches a new firm specializing in criminal and entertainment law. 

Fans of the original series will be thrilled to know that the new cast — including Josh McDermitt, Lex Scott Davis, Bryan Greenberg, and Victoria Justice — will be accompanied by at least one familiar face: Macht is set to appear as a recurring guest star.

In Entertainment Weekly‘s December cover story, creator Aaron Korsh promised that the premiere will include a “big hint” about Macht’s role in the story. Amell jumped in to explain.

“You’ll notice behind the desk that there’s a picture of a young Ted Black with what can only be a young Harvey Specter, so there’s clearly a history between the characters. We came up together in the D.A.’s office,” Amell said of Harvey and Ted’s friendship. “I am very much a fan of his character and I think that that dynamic is something the viewers will really enjoy.”

Korsh added that though Suits LA brings back Macht, and finds other ways to crossover with the OG show, he has no intention to make it “Suits season 10,” even if that’s what some fans are hoping for. 

“While at some point we might do a Suits movie and that could be fun, for the most part, I finished telling the story of those characters,” he told EW. “But I wasn’t able to finish saying what I wanted to say about the Suits universe, so this is meeting a whole new group of characters and exploring their dynamics and their passions and their fears and their hopes and their dreams. It’s fun going back to the beginning of something again.”