Suits creator Aaron Korsh was aware that Meghan Markle was dating Prince Harry during her time on the hit legal drama. However, Korsh also recently revealed the British royal family had some say in what Markle said on the show.
What changes did the Royal Family make on Suits?
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Korsh acknowledged that he knew prior to the rest of the world that Markle — who played paralegal Rachel Zane on the show — was involved with Prince Harry. Korsh said that they didn’t deal with much of the security involved with having Harry around, but that the royal family did weigh in on some things.
“I will say, and I think Harry put this in the book, because I heard people talking about it — [the royal family] weighed in on some stuff,” said Korsh. “Not many things, by the way, but a few things that we wanted to do and couldn’t do, and it was a little irritating.”
According to Korsh, the line that was changed involved Markle saying the word “poppycock,” as a nod to Korsh’s wife’s family. For whatever reason, Korsh said, the royal family didn’t want Markle saying the word “poppycock,” so it was changed to something else.
“I remember one was a particular line of dialogue and, look, I’ll just say what the line was,” Korsh said. “My wife’s family, when they have a topic to discuss that might be sensitive, they use the word, ‘poppycock.’ Let’s say you wanted to do something that you knew your husband didn’t want to do, but you wanted to at least discuss it, and in just discussing it, you wouldn’t hold him to anything he said, you’d be like, ‘It’s poppycock.'”
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Korsh continued. “So, in the episode, Mike and Rachel [Markle’s character] were going to have a thing, and as a nod to my in-laws, we were going to have her say, ‘My family would say poppycock.’ And the royal family did not want her saying the word. They didn’t want to put the word ‘poppycock’ in her mouth. I presume because they didn’t want people cutting things together of her saying ‘cock.’ So, we had to change it to ‘bulls—‘ instead of ‘poppycock,’ and I did not like it because I’d told my in-laws that [poppycock] was going to be in the show. There was maybe one or two more things, but I can’t remember.”
Korsh went on to say that he had no idea how the royal family was gaining access to the scripts, but that he understood the issue at the time. Currently, Suits is available to stream in its entirety on Netflix.
