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'Suits' writer reveals the real reason why Meghan Markle left the show: "I knew from a year ago..."

The decision to exit the show wasn't Markle's. A writer from 'Suits', Aaron Korsh, revealed that he had already planned for Markle to leave.

For those unversed, Meghan Markle played paralegal Rachel Zane in 'Suits' starting in 2011. Over seven seasons, her character became romantically involved with Mike Ross, a lead lawyer played by Patrick J. Adams. Just before she left the show, Rachel and Mike got married and decided to move to Seattle to start their own law firm. When Markle left her hit legal drama series 'Suits' in 2017, fans weren’t too surprised. At the time, her relationship with Prince Harry was getting serious, and just a year later, the two got married. However, the decision to exit the show wasn't hers. A writer from 'Suits', Aaron Korsh, revealed that he had already planned for Markle to leave.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 in 2017, he said, "I knew from a year ago that this relationship [one with Prince Harry] was burgeoning. And I had a decision to make because I didn’t want to intrude and ask her, ‘Hey, what’s going on and what are you going to do?’" He continued, "So collectively with the writers, we decided to take a gamble that these two people were in love and it was going to work out."

Korsh explained the team’s decision, adding, "What we decided to do (was to) say, ‘Look, I would rather have good things happen to Meghan in her life,' which would likely mean her leaving the show. So let’s plan on that, and it’s much easier to undo that, if it came to it, than to just plan on her staying forever and then finding out she’s going to go. And the only way to write a character out like that would be if they got hit by a bus or something." 

Tom Bower in his 2022 book 'Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors', however, argued otherwise. The royal author made several claims about Markle’s career before she left the show, including that it wasn’t going as well as some believed. Bower claimed Markle’s former agent, Nick Collins, admitted her acting career wasn’t looking great around the time she started dating Harry. "No film producer was offering her any major roles, and no serious Hollywood director spoke about featuring Meghan in his movie or TV series," Bower wrote. "Just as she feared, her acting career was stymied. Her income after 2017 would plummet," he penned, as reported by Tyla.

Bower also described how Meghan’s scripts for 'Suits' had to go through extra approval processes after she started dating Harry. He claimed, "Fearing the worst, from bitter experience, the Palace stepped in to control Meghan’s life. Aaron Korsh was told to submit all future 'Suits' scripts to Nick Collins, Meghan’s agent. Scripts were thereafter forwarded to Kensington Palace for approval. Orders for changes of words were sent back from London to Los Angeles."