EXCLUSIVE: 'Suits' Star Patrick J. Adams Dishes on Mike's Fate and Gina Torres' Finale Surprise

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Warning: Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched Wednesday’s season finale of Suits.


Suits’
Mike Ross is officially a lawyer.

After six seasons of skirting the system, Mike finally accomplished the impossible, passing the bar (following a lengthy hearing) and becoming a legitimate attorney at the end of Wednesday’s season finale. The journey to get to that point, however, was risky.

At one point, Mike was offered a deal: Admit his mentor, Harvey Specter, employed him at Pearson Specter Litt knowing full well he had no law degree, and Mike would get in scot-free, meaning Harvey would be disbarred. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

RELATED: 'Suits' First Look! Mike Contemplates His Next Move as a 'Free Man'

Instead, it was a surprise visit at the hearing from Jessica Pearson (welcome back, Gina Torres!) that propelled Mike to join the lawyer ranks, returning to Pearson Specter Litt on his own terms.

“This show has had a history of being really brave, which makes me proud to be a part of it. There’s always the tendency to always want to stick with the thing that might be easier to write for or keep the stakes in the air,” Patrick J. Adams, who plays Mike, exclusively told ET following the finale of Mike’s new power status. “But from season one, the show has done a really good job of running full tilt in a direction, even if it didn’t exactly know where it was going to go.”

ET spoke with the 35-year-old actor about Wednesday’s finale, reuniting with Torres and the show’s upcoming 100th episode.


ET: It’s amazing to think six seasons into Suits, Mike Ross finally becomes a legitimate lawyer and passes the bar. Was that a reality you thought made sense for him?


Patrick J. Adams:
Now that Mike is a lawyer, some people could say, “What’s it going to be about now? It’s just going to be about lawyers,” but I can already guarantee from the conversations I hear from the writers that now seeing these two guys [Mike and Harvey] be lawyers and fight for what kind of lawyers they want to be and what kind of cases they want to try, trying to get this firm back up and running and stronger than when Jessica was there, there’s just so many more stories still to tell that I’m super excited to be out from the weight of the secret and of the prison and to see Mike Ross become his own lawyer, free of any burden he might have been under before.

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What does this new chapter mean for Mike now that he’s no longer under the wing from Harvey?

Now that he’s made this pledge to Harvey that they will work on cases Harvey wants him to work on, but at the same time, that buys him the time and space for him to work on his own cases, really what that is, is the beginning of a bargain a lot of people as they get older and work at higher and higher levels in their chosen profession can all relate to. Having to choose small concessions for what you consider to be bigger rewards, and in the world of Suits, the stakes can be extremely high, many billions of dollars, people’s jobs and lives being ruined. Every time Mike wants to do good or work for some greater good, that can cause a lot of problems because he has to do something down the road [that he question morally]. There’s going to be a lot of sacrifice and compromise that’s going to have to happen. In the process, we get to watch Mike struggle [with] what kind of human being he wants to become and how far he’s willing to go to accomplish something good. I can sense now that that’s the direction that all of these characters [are headed], but now that he’s free from the weight of the secret and of having paid the price, now we get to see Mike decide what kind of person he wants to be.


Even though he negotiated a way where he could continue to do good in the world, it sounds like Mike still finds himself stuck in the gray area?

Yeah, and you can be sure, given that it’s Suits, there’s going to be conflicts of interests right off the bat. In a perfect world, he works for Harvey, he does the cases that Harvey needs and then he does his time saving poor people from being discriminated against and disenfranchised. But ultimately, you can probably bet that these two things are going to conflict pretty quickly and that is when the show is at its best.


At one point, Mike nudges Harvey to take the leap and take over Jessica’s old office. What do you foresee Mike and Harvey’s dynamic to be like, now that they’re both equals -- to a point?

I’m not really sure because it’ll be different than what it’s ever been. I like that you say that they’re almost equal. I hope you call Gabriel [Macht, who plays Harvey,] and tell him that. (Laughs.) I think you’re right though. They’re both on the same team, at least for now, and that’s something that people have been waiting a long time for. To have us back in the same office and working on the same case and getting to partner up and getting to do so again without having to hide anything on my end, it’s going to be fun. I assume we’re going to get a return to form for the show and get to the see a little bit of the humor come back and us just rip off each other, which is my favorite version of this show. I’m hoping that we’re going to get a lot more of that.

RELATED: Patrick J. Adams Talks 'Suits' Season 6 and Possible Wedding Bells

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I was pleasantly surprised to see Gina Torres return for the finale. What was it like having her back on set again, and having her character, Jessica, be the catalyst for having Mike becoming a real lawyer?

So good! We were so happy to have her. Obviously, we’ve missed her dearly and it was a really great full-circle moment for her character having been chiefly against Mike Ross from the beginning and always a little embittered about his coming in and infiltrating her firm. Now she gets to come back after all of this and be the final voice and put the nail in the coffin to [federal prosecutor in Mike’s case] Anita Gibbs and give Mike the chance to actually be a legitimate lawyer for once. It was a fun scene to shoot and we were so happy to have her on set and grateful that the arc of her story in the world of Suits concluded. I’m sure she’ll be back.


What do you want to see in the new season for Mike and Rachel?

What I want is for them to be doing what they’re doing. They were supposed to get married once upon a time and it feels like that should probably be revisited at some point. I’m excited that they’re young professionals -- he’s a lawyer now and she’s about to be a lawyer very soon. That’s very exciting. They’ve kind of grown up. They were kids when they met and now, they’ll be able to come full circle and live the life they’ve been building up towards. That seems to be the direction it should head in.


Season seven will include Suits’ 100th episode. Have you been able to wrap your mind around accomplishing such a rare feat?

I haven’t really wrapped my head around it. When you make these shows, you’re so in the trenches for so long and working on the show for many years, it’ll be a really wild episode to shoot. When it comes around, we’ll be able to take stock of how far we’ve come and how grateful we are to have people who still tune in every single week to see what these people are up to. That is the amazing feat and to be able to still be doing it and still be vital and still be important to viewers, it’s completely unheard of. If you’re lucky, you get a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be a part of something like that. I’m very grateful and I’m super excited that we get another season to try and keep making the show better and keeping people loving what we’re doing.


Suits
returns for season seven this summer.