Stephen Amell got surprisingly candid about why he thought Suits LA was not successful — including the moment he realized the show was headed for cancellation.
“The blame rests with me because [of] whatever problem you have with the show,” Amell, 44, said on the Tuesday, February 24, episode of the “Inside of You” podcast. “Because I think that there were issues but it’s my job to solve those, to smooth them over and to gloss them up with some type of performance or something tangible that covers up those mistakes. Because you do something that is magnetic, that is charismatic and that fixes those problems — and I didn’t do that.”
Amell recalled struggling with the reality that Suits LA wouldn’t be as successful as its predecessor.
“I didn’t find anything ultimately with [my character] Ted Black that translated and that gave us a chance to keep going,” he noted. “When I saw the pilot of Suits LA — and this goes back to about a month after we finished shooting — I sat down with creator Aaron Korsh and he was editing the pilot. He was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work.’”
Suits found a dedicated fanbase when it first aired — but its Netflix debut has made the legal drama even more popular. The USA series, which originally ran for nine seasons from 2011 to 2019, stars Patrick J. Adams as Mike Ross, a man who convinced a New York City law firm to give him […]
He continued: “A lot of what he wanted to do seemed to run up against what the network wanted. It seems like they just — I don’t want to say they battled — because I wasn’t a part of those conversations. So I’m not going to speculate. But it just seemed like what he wanted to do and what they wanted to do were different.”
Set in a fictional New York City corporate law firm, the original Suits followed associate lawyer Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) as he starts working with Harvey Specter. The legal drama, which ran from 2011 to 2019, focused on Harvey and Mike winning lawsuits and closing cases while simultaneously hiding Mike’s secret — he didn’t go to law school.
The show had a resurgence in popularity in 2023 when it was added to Netflix and Peacock’s streaming libraries. As a result, NBC developed a spinoff starring Amell, Josh McDermitt, Lex Scott Davis and Bryan Greenberg.
“Quite often [in that situation], maybe that gets us another season. We certainly thought that we were going to have another one where we get to work out some of those issues,” Amell continued. “It just so happened that they went, ‘No, we’re going to pull the plug.’”
The actor recalled seeing signs of complications early on, adding, “Getting back to the original thing that I think that it was going to do well. I remember sitting with Aaron and he really felt like he had to piece the pilot together to make it work and to get in line with the notes that he was getting. I remember thinking, ‘That’s not how shooting the pilot felt.’”
He added: “Everything felt great. I was like, ‘We are off and we are running and this is amazing. To hear that he was having difficulty satisfying what they were asking for … it turns out apparently that it almost didn’t go. It almost didn’t get picked up. I didn’t know that until after the fact.”
From sitcoms and game shows to dramas and cartoons, the list of TV reboots and revivals is a long one. Waiting to Exhale and Conan the Barbarian are both films being made into TV shows, while Gilmore Girls was transformed into four seasons for its Netflix revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which […]
The spinoff was canceled just three months after its February 2025 debut. Nearly one year later, Amell clarified why he was willing to publicly shoulder some of the blame.
“If it’s going to be successful, I’m going to get a disproportionate amount of the credit. It’s only fair that I stand in front and I take the blame,” he continued. “I’m the lead of the series and it didn’t work.”
While reflecting on the challenges associated with filming the show, Amell named two regrets: not speaking up about the promotional poster and not being present the day the cast watched the series premiere together.
“I didn’t get to have any input on my picture in the poster, which was just a miscommunication with people. I saw it for the first time and I was like, ‘That’s the photo that you guys are using?’ That was ego. That’s just me being like, ‘Maybe I would have chosen a different picture. Maybe I wouldn’t have,’” he noted. “I also regretted going to New York for two quick press hits.”
Amell specifically mentioned his appearances on the Today show and The Kelly Clarkson Show, saying, “Both of those programs were lovely and I appreciate that they had me. I remember talking to one of the EPs about how I should have been with my people watching the show. But those are two pretty superficial and relatively meaningless regrets. The overall experience was really, really extraordinary.”