Many do not know that the wife of Prince Harry starred in ‘Suits’, the legal drama television series that aired from June 2011 to September 2019.
Suits was said to have taken the streaming world by storm and is mostly known now as the television series that Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, starred in before she left to marry Prince Harry.
Meghan starred in Suits for seven seasons and wrapped filming on her final season in November 2017. Days later, she and Prince Harry announced their engagement in the gardens of Kensington Palace in London — with many of Meghan’s Suits costars later attending their May 2018 royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
The series centers on a fictional New York City law firm and follows the exploits of Patrick J. Adams’ Mike Ross, who manages to talk his way into a job as a lawyer despite having never attended law school. Naturally, Mike spends a number of seasons hoping to keep his big secret to himself, but eventually, it comes out.
Meghan Markle starred as Rachel Zane in ‘Suits’
Arguably the most famous cast member of Suits since the show’s ending, many people know that Meghan Markle left Suits to marry Prince Harry in 2018. Ahead of her departure, Markle’s character Rachel Zane was a fan favorite who finally tied the knot with Adams’ character at the end of season 7 before the pair moved on to new jobs in Seattle.
In 2022, Markle revealed that she spent most of the first season waiting to be fired from the show. As she told Variety, “For me, I had tried for so long to land on a show, filming all these pilots, wondering if they would get picked up. All of Season 1 on Suits, I was convinced I was going to get recast. All the time. It got to a point where the creator was like, ‘Why are you so worried about this?’ ”
Clearly, Markle had nothing to worry about. After leaving Suits, she and Prince Harry went on to found their non-profit organization Archewell and have welcomed two children together, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
Markle was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and she and Harry left their royal duties and returned to her home state, where they are raising their family in Montecito.
4 years on, ‘Suits’ is still making the waves
Nielsen reported that the legal drama, which aired on the USA Network between 2011 and 2019, has set a new record as the most viewed acquired streaming title nearly four years after its series finale.
The show starring Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Sarah Rafferty, and Markle hit 3 billion viewing minutes between its two streaming platforms Peacock and Netflix for the week of June 26 to July 2.
On Netflix, which has the show’s first eight seasons available for streaming, Suits’ first season accumulated more than 26 million hours viewed during that week alone, according to Netflix’s Top Ten list. The show has remained in Netflix’s Top 10 Series for at least 4 weeks.
Suits follows the character of Mike Ross (Adams), who find himself working at a law firm alongside some of New York City’s best lawyers including Harvey Specter (Macht), Donna Paulson (Rafferty) and Rachel Zane (Markle).
Moving away from the show
Shortly after Markle and Prince Harry announced their engagement in November 2017, the cable channel announced the actress — who was stepping away from show business entirely — was leaving the show after season 7.
Despite Markle and her costar Adams both leaving their roles after the series’ seventh season, Suits carried on for two more seasons, concluding in 2019.
The show debuted on Netflix in June, six months after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s docuseries Harry & Meghan dropped on Netflix, making history as the platform’s biggest documentary debut ever with 81.55 million viewing hours.
Markle and Prince Harry, 38, first signed a multi-year deal with Netflix in September 2020. At the time, The New York Times reported that the couple’s production hub, later named Archewell Productions, would exclusively make documentaries, docuseries, feature films, scripted shows and children’s programming for the platform according to PEOPLE.
So far, Harry & Meghan and Live to Lead — a documentary series inspired by Nelson Mandela and highlighting the work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Greta Thunberg, Gloria Steinem and more — are their projects available to stream.