Famous former podcast host Meghan Markle shared her admiration for the surprising rise in popularity of her former show, Suitsenjoyed this year.
The Duchess of Sussex was asked about the legal drama’s renewed popularity in Varietyin “Power of Women” event on Thursday, November 17th. “Isn’t that wild?” Markle said, adding that she had “no idea” what was driving people back to the legal drama.
“It was great working with such a great cast and crew,” Markle continued. “We had a lot of fun. I was on it for seven seasons, quite a lot. But it’s hard to find a show that you can watch that many episodes these days, so that might have something to do with it. But good shows are eternal.”
Suits ran for nine seasons in the US, debuting in 2011 and ending in 2019. Markle appeared in the show’s first seven seasons, playing Rachel Zane, a cool nepo baby (so to speak) who first works as a paralegal before earning a law degree and becoming an associate. Markle left the series after the seventh season, following the small business of her engagement to Prince Harry.
To put some numbers in Suits resurgence, as of yesterday, the show has spent 18 consecutive weeks in the Nielsen Streaming Top 10, many of which were at number one (just recently lost first place for Fall of the House of Usher). To date, the series has also surpassed 45 billion minutes streamed on Netflix and Peacock combined.
Writing about the Suitableassistance for Rolling Stone This summer, TV critic Alan Sepinwall suggested that the series — like other laid-back, uplifting shows that aired in the U.S. during the “Blue Skies” era — was “a perfect second-screen experience, allowing viewers to “easily perform other things”. while watching the show.
He continued: “There is always a demand for this kind of pleasant, passive viewing experience, and sometimes more demand than the industry is willing to provide. Most Netflix original series are intensely serialized, demanding your attention from one plot point to the next, whether the individual points are interesting or not. Suits it’s lightly serialized… but a lot of it is the kind of case-of-the-week TV has been doing for as long as the medium has existed. It’s the kind of series that Netflix has resisted making for itself, but that its subscribers clearly want.”
