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Altar-bound Meghan Markle to leave TV show with a wedding
By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertain- ment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Real life will imi- tate art this spring at the USA series “Suits” when series regular Meghan Markle bids farewell to the legal drama in a wedding
— and then goes o to marry her prince in real life.
Show creator and show runner Aaron Korsh has written an on-screen wedding for Markle’s paralegal-turned-lawyer Ra- chel Zane, who will nally exchange vows during the April 25 season seven nale with her longtime love Mike Ross, played by Patrick Adams. e two have been lovebirds for years and had one previous wedding date collapse.
Both actors will then exit the show, which starts lming season eight this month. e wedding will be a sort of dress rehearsal for Markle’s real one to Prince Harry at Britain’s Windsor Castle on May 19.
“I think we had to do this,” said Korsch. “It’s something that we owed and had to do. Obviously, I’m so happy for Meghan in her personal life and that it landed sort of
similarly. It just happens.”
Korsh said he was thankfully given
enough warning that Markle’s real-life romance might trigger changes in her character’s plotline and he didn’t have to scramble to undo anything.
“When you start a show, they de nitely don’t tell you to anticipate that one of your actors is going to marry a prince. at’s just not in the handbook,” he said. “But a lot of time, these things kind of force you to open up the box and get creative and invite new characters into your world and explore them.”
One new character who joins in season eight will be Katherine Heigl, a veteran of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “State of A airs.” She’ll star alongside regulars Rick Ho - man, Gabriel Macht and Sarah Ra erty. Dule Hill will also become a series regular. ere’s also a “Suits” spino planned star- ring Gina Torres, a former series regular.
Macht, who plays Harvey Specter on
the show, has already texted and emailed Heigl to welcome her. “I think she’s going to fuel a lot of re for a lot of the characters
in the show and there’s going to be a lot of con ict going on,” he said.
Macht said it was a bittersweet time for the show with the arrival of a lm star to the cast but also the loss of Markle and Adams, two actors from the core ensemble.
“ eir intelligence and their humor and just the weight that they bring onto set will be sorely missed. It’ll be a new space. It’ll be a new rhythm that we’ll all have to nd,” he said. “ at brings opportunity for us but it also brings a sense of loss.”
Korsh said at least he could give the long-engaged couple a happily-ever-a er “in a climactic way, which is very satisfy- ing.”
“ e good thing is if they didn’t ride o into the sunset together, we would have
to break them up and we didn’t want to
do that,” he said. “ at was one fortuitous thing that happened with them both leav- ing at the same time: We got to give them a happy ending.”
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/ KennedyTwits
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