Actor hopes ‘Suits’ success will benefit new show
Rafferty taking on mom role in ‘My Life With Walter Boys’
This summer, Sarah Rafferty starred in one of the most watched shows to hit streaming — four years after the series ended its run.
“Suits,” the legal drama that originally ran on USA Network from 2011 to 2019, has seen a resurgence in popularity since it became available to stream on Netflix in June. (It’s also available to stream in full on Peacock.) In the months since, the series has broken several streaming records — notching 18 billion streaming minutes in July alone — and is the most watched title ever acquired by a streaming service, according to Nielsen.
It’s the sort of feat Rafferty’s character on the show, the all-knowing and impeccably dressed legal secretary-turned Chief Operations Officer Donna Paulsen, might be tempted to celebrate by partaking in the show’s ever-mysterious can opener ritual. Rafferty, though, is hoping some of that success will benefit her newest series for the streamer. She stars as Katherine Walter, the matriarch of the large Walter family, in Netflix’s adaptation of the Ali Novak’s coming-of-age novel, “My Life With the Walter Boys.” Now streaming, the series revolves around 15-yearold Jackie, who is uprooted from Manhattan to rural Colorado after the deaths of several members of her immediate family. She is taken in by her mom’s best friend, Katherine, and her husband, George (Marc Blucas), who are already raising 10 children, mostly boys.
This interview with Rafferty has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: How was Katherine
Walter, this beloved veterinarian in her community and the matriarch to a family of 10 children, presented to you?
A:
I only had the first episode, and I really focused just on the scene when she goes to Jackie — Jackie was supposed to have fallen in the pool, but (instead) she got splashed by the dogs. That was the scene I was given to make my decision about. I think what I really connected to was the humanity of this mother, desperately wanting to be picked by her best friend’s child to
allow her the opportunity to nurture her into her new life. And that Katherine, not to the extent of Jackie, is also really grieving this loss too, and out of that comes this desire for the connection. That really spoke to me. I had known that Katherine herself was an adopted child. We know she had an amazing childhood and beautiful adoptive parents, but she still had an ache to understand her birth mother and where she came from, and maybe a little piece of the “why.” And out of seeking that, she went on this
healing journey of building her own family in a modern way with chosen and blood family. I think the fact that she has a big, huge, sprawling, chaotic family is a huge part of her healing journey. She wants to offer that to Jackie.
Q: You’re often doing scenes with a gaggle of young actors, mainly boys. How much did you take on a motherly role with them? A:
If you could look through all my texts, you would see it’s definitely a motherly role. I was just texting with Noah
LaLonde (who plays Cole) this morning. Those actors make it easy. I actually had one moment where I said to Melanie (Halsall, who developed the adaptation for TV), “I keep finding myself grabbing their faces!” I was like, “You’re gonna have to edit around a couple of face grabs. I just couldn’t help it. Like, you’ll have to cut away before my hands are on their face.” They were so delightful.
Q: What were you thinking when it became clear “Suits” was having a moment over the summer, and even now?
A:
I’m just grateful. It’s impossible to metabolize or wrap your brain around billions of minutes being watched. And we even have a group chat — the “Suits” family group chat — and sometimes an article would come out, and we’d all be like, “What??” What I feel about it is that right now, our world feels like it’s growing more and more fractured and dark. And if people are turning to television, or turning to “Suits,” to escape, or to find relief, or to find comfort, or to have a connection, then that’s incredibly gratifying. It sounds really cheesy, but that fills my heart.
Q: The timing must have been bittersweet. One of the rules for SAG-AFTRA members during the strike was to refrain from promoting current or past projects, so I imagine it must have been difficult to not be able to fully engage with the fandom.
A:
The strike was a hard time for everybody in the industry. Nothing could ever eclipse my gratitude for “Suits” and for the people who are watching it and for how it is being received. But some of the celebration, of course, had to be tempered by the fact that we were a part of a labor movement, across multiple industries, where workers had to strike to fight for fair pay that was commensurate with the value of the products they were creating.
I think in terms of our industry, we all see really good evidence of the value — “Suits” was getting billions of minutes on Netflix. I hope that people who are into teen dramas are going to binge “My Life With the Walter Boys” on Netflix. I would say that having to fight as long and as hard as we did was at times disheartening, but at the same time, there was so much solidarity on the line, there was so much solidarity from sibling unions, who were also making great sacrifices. It really was a summer of holding two feelings at the same time.
Q: Other USA network shows like “Monk” and “Psych” got a movie. Would you do that? Tell me where you see Donna and Harvey in 2023.
A:
Yes, I would do that. The beauty is the writers get to tell me where Donna and Harvey are in 2023. And the sky’s the limit. They can come up with anything, especially if we’re doing a movie version of it. I just have to potentially adjust Donna’s heel height because I’ve taken a significant amount of time outside of those Barbie-like shoes.
Q: Cast members revisiting some of their popular works in the form of a rewatch podcast is also a growing genre. Would you consider doing a “Suits” podcast?
A:
How about I answer it this way: Patrick and I have been having some conversations about how we can celebrate this kind of historic viewing of the show, how we can actually process that and feel it and how we can connect with the fans who made it what it was, in a more real way. I hope that in the new year, we will have something, a way for everybody to connect and celebrate together.