The lead actor of the short-lived Suits spinoff opens up about why the show failed to connect with audiences and the creative struggles behind the scenes.
Nearly one year after NBC pulled the plug on Suits LA, series star Stephen Amell is finally sharing his honest thoughts about why the show did not work. The Arrow alum, who played entertainment lawyer Ted Black in the spinoff, appeared on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast and gave a candid breakdown of what went wrong, openly admitting that he holds himself responsible for the show’s failure.
The Suits spinoff arrived with high expectations in February 2025. The original series had experienced an incredible comeback after landing on Netflix in 2023, breaking streaming records and introducing the legal drama to a whole new generation of viewers. NBC moved quickly to develop a continuation, setting the action in Los Angeles with a fresh cast led by Amell. But despite the built-in audience and the return of original cast favorites like Gabriel Macht and Rick Hoffman, the show never took off.
Stephen Amell Says He Failed to Solve the Show’s Problems
During his conversation on the podcast, Amell did not hold back when asked about the show’s cancellation. His answer was simple and direct .
“It wasn’t good enough.”
The 44-year-old actor explained that while he noticed issues with the show during production, he believes his job as the lead actor was to fix those problems through his performance. In his view, he did not succeed .
“Whatever problem you have with the show — because I think that there were issues — it’s my job to solve those, to smooth them over, to gloss them up with some type of performance or something that, tangible or otherwise, covers up those mistakes. Because you do something that is magnetic, that is charismatic, that fixes those problems. And I didn’t do that. I didn’t find anything ultimately with Ted Black that translated, that smoothed those things over, that gave us a chance to keep going.”
Amell made it clear that he is not trying to deflect blame onto writers, directors, or network executives. He sees taking responsibility as part of being the face of a series .
“If it’s successful, I’m gonna get a disproportionate amount of the credit. And so I think it’s only fair that I stand in front and I take the blame. I’m the lead of the series. And it didn’t work.”
Behind-the-Scenes Struggles Between Creator and Network
While Amell placed the primary blame on himself, he also shared details about creative conflicts happening behind the scenes. The actor recalled a conversation with series creator Aaron Korsh shortly after they finished shooting the pilot that first raised red flags .
Amell said he sat down with Korsh while the creator was editing the pilot episode. Instead of feeling confident about the start of their new show, Korsh expressed doubts.
“He was like, ‘I don’t know if this is gonna work.’”
According to Amell, Korsh faced ongoing struggles with NBC over the creative direction of the series. What the creator wanted to do often clashed with what the network was asking for .
“A lot of what he wanted to do seemed to run up against what the network wanted. I don’t wanna say they battled because I wasn’t a part of those conversations, so I’m not gonna speculate. But it just seemed like what he wanted to do and what they wanted to do [was] different.”
The actor added that he later learned the show almost did not get picked up at all, a fact he only discovered after the cancellation was announced. During production, everything had felt positive on set .
“Everything felt great. I was like, ‘We are off and we are running and this is amazing.’ To hear that he was having difficulty satisfying what they were asking for … it turns out apparently that it almost didn’t go. It almost didn’t get picked up. I didn’t know that until after the fact.”
Low Ratings and Weak Reviews Sealed the Show’s Fate
The numbers behind Suits LA tell a clear story. Despite all the buzz surrounding the original series on Netflix, the spinoff failed to capture that same energy. The show premiered in February 2025 and ran for 10 episodes, but viewership never crossed the 1 million mark for live broadcasts .
Critics were also tough on the series. The show holds a 36% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.7 rating on IMDb . Publications like the New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter ran negative reviews, with critics pointing to tonal confusion and a jumbled narrative . The AV Club went as far as to call it a “disaster” .
NBC officially canceled the show in May 2025. Jeff Bader, the president of program planning strategy at NBCUniversal Entertainment, explained the decision at the time .
“It’s so hard to talk about shows and which ones you bring back, and Suits had a very short run, but it really just has not resonated the way we thought it would. There can be many, many reasons why, people are speculating why it hasn’t resonated, but it’s just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future, unfortunately.”
The network was also making room for a new $2.5 billion-per-year deal with the NBA, which meant clearing space in the schedule for basketball games. Several other shows, including The Irrational, Found, Night Court, and Lopez vs Lopez, were also canceled around the same time .
Streaming Strategy May Have Backfired
Another factor that may have hurt the show was its streaming home. The original Suits found massive success on Netflix, but NBC decided to keep the spinoff exclusive to their own streaming service, Peacock. This choice limited the show’s reach compared to its predecessor .
Some industry observers believe putting the show on Netflix could have given it a better chance to find an audience, especially since the original series had built such a large fanbase on that platform. However, NBC was reportedly hoping to use Suits LA as a flagship title to boost Peacock subscriptions .
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Amell’s Small Regrets and What He Learned
Looking back, Amell shared a couple of lighter regrets about his experience with the show. He wished he had been more involved in choosing the promotional poster image, calling it a “miscommunication” that bothered his ego. He also regretted not being in Los Angeles with the rest of the cast for the series premiere, as he was in New York doing press appearances .
“Both of those programs were lovely and I appreciate that they had me. I remember talking to one of the EPs about how I should have been with my people watching the show. But those are two pretty superficial and relatively meaningless regrets. The overall experience was really, really extraordinary.”
Despite the show’s failure, Amell emphasized that he enjoyed working with the cast and crew and looks back on the experience positively. He also made it clear that the cast and crew believed they would get a second season to fix the issues, which made the cancellation more disappointing .
“Quite often [in that situation], maybe that gets us another season. We certainly thought that we were going to have another one where we get to work out some of those issues. It just so happened that they went, ‘No, we’re going to pull the plug.’”
Fans of the actor do not need to worry about his career. Amell has already moved on to his next project. He has been cast as David Hasselhoff’s son in a Baywatch reboot for Fox, giving him another chance to lead a series with built-in name recognition .
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