Josh McDermitt Reveals Gabriel Macht Advice Before Suits L.A.

The Suits L.A. star spoke to TooFab about the spinoff of the fan-favorite series, and the advice he got from Suits O.G. Gabriel Macht that helped maintain perspective as he entered into the franchise.

“He was talking about when he signed on to do the original series, they shot it in New York, but then they moved the show to Toronto and he lived in New York. And when we did our show, our pilot, we shot it in Vancouver and then it moved to L.A. and he just said, keep in mind that, that you just maintain that perspective,” shared McDermitt.

“He’s like, ‘It could be that you would be working in another town. So don’t ever take for granted that you’re working in the town you live in and that you get to have ‘Suits L.A.’ shoot in L.A,'” he continued. “And he was telling that to Brian Greenberg and I, and it was a nice perspective to have called out for us.”

He continued, “You’re just living your life and you’re doing your thing. And maybe you forget that, like, oh, ‘We’re very blessed to be working, number one, but more blessed to be working in L.A. when there’s so much production that’s moved out of town.’ And that was something that was a nice perspective to just like be grateful and and kind of take inventory of that every once in a while and go, ‘Yeah, this is great. This is really nice.'”

It was also great to have him on the spinoff, with McDermitt telling Toofab there would be no Suits L.A. without Macht, who reprises his role of Harvey Specter on the series.

“It’s really great to have his blessing on the show and for him to come do it. And I see him doing press for it for the for our show,” McDermitt, who plays lawyer Stuart Lane on the show, gushed. “And, you know, there is no Suits L.A. without Gabriel Macht and the cast and crew that made Suits. So we’re very, very thankful for that.”

While Suits L.A. did relocate the franchise to the city of its namesake, production originally started in Vancouver, where he got the the chance to bond with co-star Stephen Amell, who plays entertainment attorney, Ted Black. And though the pair had crossed paths at Comic-Cons over the years, with McDermitt on The Walking Dead and Amell on Arrow, preparing for Suits was the first time the on-screen friends-turned-enemies-turned friends again really got to know each other.

“We’ll do the autograph signing conventions, the Comic-Con things and when you’re doing those, you’re kind of at your own little table and you’re in your own little world, but I’d met him briefly in passing a couple times. I don’t know if he remembers it. You know, it’s not like we sat and talked,” McDermitt shared before teasing a spoiler ahead to come this season.

“I won’t say who because it’s a spoiler, but we just had a friend of mine come on the show and do a guest spot, and Steven only knows him from the Comic-Con circuit, wow, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m used to seeing you out these things,’ and they’ve actually spent time together,'” he continued. “I got a little jealous, I was like, ‘How did you have time to do that, because I never feel like I have time at those things to get to know anybody.”

He continued, “What was great about when we were shooting the pilot, especially like if Stuart and Ted were going to be best friends in the show, it was that we needed to spend time together, and we got up to Vancouver like a month or two before we shot the pilot. They shot Arrow up there and Steven still has so many friends up there, and he just kept inviting me out to hang out with his friends. And it was — he’s got a great group of friends, like, really nice, genuine people. I mean, they’re all Canadian, so yeah very nice.”

“It says a lot about a person with who they surround themselves with. And I just remember thinking like, ‘Oh, this is really nice. This is going to be a fun experience with him,'” McDermitt added.

Suits L.A. also gives McDermitt the chance to rock his natural locks, trading in the dark mullet and, eventually, braid he was known for as Eugene on The Walking Dead for a blonde ‘do and a beard. While some of his collaborators knew who he was despite the change in appearance, that wasn’t true of everyone.

“My first and second season on Walking Dead, I went and did a few episodes of Mad Men. And so when I came back to start shooting on Walking Dead, I showed up with blonde hair, but everybody knew it was me immediately. And I thought they wouldn’t know,” he told TooFab.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I got blonde hair and it’s short. Like they’re not going to know anything because they would clip in extensions and they hadn’t dyed my hair back yet.’ But no, they all knew. And I think people recognize it,” McDermitt insisted. “But the other thing is there’s a lot of crew members who watched Walking Dead. I mean, we had some of our transportation guys, we’ve been working with them all season, and just last week, he’s like, ‘Dude, I just realized who you were. I love Walking Dead.’ Like, they just don’t know. That’s kind of fun is to watch that excitement and the realization happen in real time.”

With the excitement from fans of established franchises like TWD and Suits also comes a bit of pressure — something he says he and his Suits L.A. co-stars are very my aware of.

“I think there’s always going to be pressure no matter what show we do, even if Suits didn’t exist and we were just some other show called Suits L.A. that had nothing to do with Suits. There would be pressure,” he explained. “But there is pressure in that people have expectations and this is the fan’s show and we want to do a good job. We want to — it’s our work that that is going to be put into it. So we just we put that pressure on ourselves already. But the fact that, yeah, there’s a fervor with these folks that it’s like, they’re geeked up. They’re excited.”

Even McDermitt’s own father is fan of the original series — which came as a surprise to him after he told him he’d be filming the spinoff.

“My own dad, like, he is like the biggest OG Suits fan. I didn’t even know that. He’s like more excited than anyone I’ve ever talked to about Suits L.A. And it’s like, that’s what I have to think about is people are excited about this. ‘Don’t screw this up, you know?'” he quipped.

Suits L.A. airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET on NBC.