Patrick J. Adams Talks SUITS, Joining the Show, Challenging Scenes, Improv on Set and Fan Expectations for the Rest of Season 2
by Christina Radish Posted: November 14th, 2012 at 8:21 am
With award season campaigning in full swing, the SAG Awards TV nominating committee held a screening and Q&A for the USA Network hit drama series
Suits, and Collider was invited to attend. With the fate of Pearson Hardman having been determined, things will pick back up on January 17, 2013 in a very different, weakened place, and the dynamic duo of Harvey Specter (
Gabriel Macht) and Mike Ross (
Patrick J. Adams) may also be called into question, with Mike still reeling from the death of his beloved grandmother and questioning his place at the firm. The show also stars
Gina Torres,
Rick Hoffman,
Meghan Markle and
Sarah Rafferty.
During this interview, show star Patrick J. Adams talked about how he came to be a part of
Suits, how he first met co-star Gabriel Macht, the most challenging scene hes had to do, how much improvisation they do on set, how the show has changed his life, what fans fan expect from the remaining Season 2 episodes, and how much hes like his character, in real life. He also talked about when he realized he wanted to be an actor, how he went about achieving that goal, learning hed been nominated for a SAG Award last year, his worst audition (which consisted of him mistakenly thinking
Mad Men was a sitcom), his favorite roles prior to
Suits, and what got him through the times when he was struggling in his career. Check out what he had to say after the jump.
Question: How did you hear that youd been nominated for a SAG Award last year?
PATRICK J. ADAMS: Its the same story that everybody has heard, a million times, and you think that its a lie, but I literally had no idea. It had been the most surreal year, already. It was my first TV series, and I didnt even know that awards were being announced. My dear friend and manager called me weeping, and when you hear somebody crying in the morning, at 4 am, youre sure something has gone terribly wrong. He wasnt really speaking English properly, he was just weeping and going, Oh, my god, you did it! And then, after awhile, I figured out what I had done. He told me, and I saw the 18 calls that I had missed. Thats how I found out. And then, you do that thing where you just get rushed around and you talk to people that youve never met and get cameras pointed in your face, and you try to pretend that its all completely normal when its not. That was the morning.
How did you originally get your SAG card?
ADAMS: I was Taft-Hartleyed for the movie Old School. Im Canadian, and I was going to school at the University of Southern California. There was a cattle call, which is not the nice thing to call it, but 50 slots were given to USC students to audition as pledge brothers. I went in and Todd Phillips, who Im sure was stoned or something, said, Do a Scottish accent for fun? So, I did it, and then he told me to get out. And then, I found out a month later that I had missed a fitting for wardrobe, so they called me in. I had under 12 hours to figure out how to legally begin an internship through USC, to allow me to do Old School. So, I went to the immigration office at USC and threw myself at their mercy, and figured out a way to do this film as an internship. I was going into class and writing essays about working on Old School and wrestling in lubricant with people who were writing essays about their accounting internship or their legal internship. That was my first job, and I spent a month on set with those guys. I really just got a crash course on how sets works and in comedy because that wasnt my strong suit. I just got to watch a lot of funny people doing funny things.
Was that your first time on camera?
ADAMS: Professionally, for sure, yeah. I hadnt done anything in Canada, and it was my second year in the States. That was my first time ever on a set, of any kind.
What was it like to work with Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn?
ADAMS: My whole career is just terror, from beginning to end. Thats kind of my thing. A lot of happy accidents happened. I really began as a pledge brother, who was supposed to stand there and not say anything, so they didnt have to pay me more. And then, they would come up to us and say, Who can play the guitar?, and Id be like, I can play the guitar. All of a sudden, I was with Will Ferrell, practicing Dust in the Wind. There were a couple little things like that, throughout the course of the shoot, that put me at the forefront of the background. Thats the story of my life, the forefront of the background.
When did you realize you wanted to be an actor?
ADAMS: I was very young. I fell in love with acting, just going to a lot of plays. My parents went to a lot of plays, and I went to a lot of schools that would get plays for kids. I just got transported by that. I was always into film, but theater was my entry point. I always felt like film didnt make sense to me, as a kid. It was just so magical that I was like, Theres something going on back there that I dont know. But, when I watched theater, it was something that was happening in front of me. I could see a dark room suddenly be turned into something completely different, and that was overwhelming for me. So, from a very young age, my mom tells me that I wanted to be Michael J. Fox. I didnt want to be an actor. I just wanted to be Michael J. Fox for awhile. And then, I realized that he was an actor, so I pursued that.
How did you set out to achieve that goal?
ADAMS: Anytime I met an actor, I just attacked them and said, How did you do this? Eventually, I began to realize that you went to school for it. I wasnt a bright kid, so it took me a long time to figure that out. So, I decided to go to a good training program. My mom had sold a business and had become successful, and she had enough money to send me to a good school, and I knew that I wanted to come down to the States. I really loved what was going on down here versus a lot of people I knew that were going to theater programs in Canada, which seemed like it was very insular and would just stay up there. So, I applied to NYU and USC, but I didnt get in to NYU. I ended up at USC, and that was it.
What did you see your career being? Did you want to do theater, movies or TV, or did you want to just do everything?
ADAMS: Everything! I was really hungry. I just wanted to do it all. Film and television was so strange to me because I didnt grow up in the business, I didnt know anything about it and I had never been on set before. But, from the minute I got on set and did Old School, I was like, I want to do this! I also felt like I wasnt ready to do it, so it really forced me to take my training a lot more seriously and to get on as many sets as possible, which is how I ended up doing literally every television show ever made, for at least a day. It was great to see how that worked. Thats how I cut my teeth.
Are you good at auditioning?
ADAMS: You know, its still a struggle. I had an audition today that wasnt great, and that happens all the time. It really depends on the room, it depends on the material, and it really depends on the planets aligning sometimes. So, I dont think theres any one skill to it. I like auditioning. I like working on material. I just love working. I like the chance to work on material. Sometimes it helps to not be going into a room cold and to know people. Ive spent a lot of years getting to know people in the business, and that really helps. It depends. You can have some pretty terrible auditions.
What was your worst audition?
ADAMS: I dont know. There are so many bad ones. I dont know specifically what the worst one would be. There are ones where I was crying, all of a sudden, and thats inappropriate. Youll love this story: When Mad Men came out, there was a sitcom that same year, also called Mad Men. This was my first time going in for Mad Men, and no one knew what it was. So, my manager said, Its a sitcom. Just go and youll love it. Its going to be great. I read the material and thought, This is not that funny. But, the thing about sitcoms is that the sitcom scripts are not that funny. A lot of times, thats people making it funny. So, I was tearing my hair out about how to make Mad Men funny. I went in and did my thing, and I got called back. I was treating Mad Men like a full-out, big sitcom, and I got called back. I went in with (show creator) Matthew Weiner, who now has written one of the best shows of all time, and I did my thing and he just stared at me. It wasnt in a bad way, but just like, Whats going on with this kid? Hes making interesting choices that are a little big. I ended up getting called back for other parts on the show, so I dont think I offended him too badly. But, that was an example of a pretty horrifying audition, when I realized exactly what Mad Men was. The horror didnt come until many months later, when I saw the show and realized what a fool I had made of myself. That stuff happens, all the time.
Prior to booking
Suits, what were some of your favorite roles?
ADAMS: Recently, Luck was a game-changer for me. Before that, Friday Night Lights was a really amazing show to work on. That was a game-changer for me, too. That show was all about the moment between the actors. They didnt really care about anything else. It was not about the lights or where the cameras were. They wanted spontaneity. They wanted to see those moments happen between actors. It was actually really off-putting because you get used to being the fifth thing that people are worried about on set. They want to get the light right, make sure the camera is where its supposed to be, get the Coke can in place, and make sure the Lexus symbol on the is showing, and then once all of that is lined up, that moment with the actors can happen. But, they did not care about any of that. We didnt even get to rehearse. They didnt want us to rehearse lines or block anything. They were just like, Go!, and there were cameras everywhere. You didnt even know where the cameras were. That was really scary and off-putting, at first, but after you shoot two or three scenes, you end up feeling so alive and so electric and so in the moment. And they didnt care if you did it the same way twice. It was really, really freeing, as an actor. It made me excited that there was work like that out there cause I had been just showing up and being the random paralegal for an episode. I was a huge fan of Lost, so that was great. My ringtone was the Lost theme, and it rang when I was in the make-up trailer. I tried to get answers from people about what was going on and tried not to geek out too hard, so that was fun. But, Luck was really the moment I feel like I went from being a boy to being a man, in some respects, through the help of Dustin Hoffman.
How did you first become aware of
Suits, and how did you go about getting the role?
ADAMS: My agents and manager found the script and sent it to me. I had been fired from a job, the year before, and I was pretty miserable. Everybody on my team was trying to find a great project that would pull me out of the whole that I was in, and along came Mike Ross. It was this perfect world where this character was in a whole of his own. He was in a real rut. He had all this potential, but he just didnt believe in himself. He had screwed up his life, beyond repair. And then, here comes this opportunity for him to do something great. So, they put the script in front of me and I read it, and the moment I read it, I was like, I know this guy, inside out. Thats not a challenge. But, it was a challenge in ways that I hadnt expected. I went in and it was just easy. It rolled off the tongue. Theres that great scene from the pilot, where Im interviewing for the job and convincing this guy that Im going to be the best lawyer hes ever seen, at that was the easiest scene Ive ever had to do, for a group of executives. I was just like, I can do this job! Give me this job! Trust me, I can do this job! Thats basically what the audition was, so it was simple. I think I auditioned five or six times, as is the wonderful process of testing, and then I had the part. It was the easiest part Id ever gotten, as people say when something is supposed to happen like that. It just suddenly all falls into place and its way easier than youd ever imagined.
Had you done that role that you were fired from, would you even have been able to do
Suits?
ADAMS: No. I probably would be addicted to painkillers and just really unhappy, if that whole thing had worked out. It was not a great show, and it fell apart. After I got fired, Im pretty sure they consecutively fired every single person involved, all the way down to the craft truck, and then it just fell apart. I think they aired eight episodes of the show. It was just one of those things where, from the top down, it was being micro-managed and not dealt with well. I think it was just micro-managed into the ground. So, everything happens for a reason, it turns out. Thats not wrong.
My first thought was "Mike has his own Donna" but Donna is hotter, Tess has more sunken eyes.
