“Suits LA” creator Aaron Korsh was on the hunt for his next leading man, Ted Black.
Casting Amell would be Korsh’s starting point in creating the next installment in the “Suits” universe, which unexpectedly became a matter of urgency after summer 2023. It was then that Korsh’s campy legal drama “Suits” — which aired on USA Network from 2011 to 2019 — was acquired by Netflix and immediately exploded on the streamer. Whether the show was newly popular because of its charming ensemble cast, which included a before-she-was-royalty Meghan Markle, or because it offered the kind of uncomplicated pleasures that have been missing during the streaming wars, the series went megaviral. It topped Nielsen’s charts for a record 12 weeks and became the most-streamed show of the year, with more than 50 billion minutes watched. Netflix touted its “Summer of ‘Suits,’” and the hype was real.
By fall, of course, entertainment executives were looking for the next “Suits,” something that could replicate the show’s comforting, low-stakes, addictive vibes. Korsh was ready with an idea. He’d pitched a series about Hollywood agents, not in the “Suits” universe, during the COVID pandemic. NBC passed at the time, then asked him to rework it into a “Suits” spinoff; in the new series, former New York prosecutor Ted Black leads an entertainment law firm, representing A-list clients on the West Coast.
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Korsh knew the key to “Suits” was its casting, especially finding the right lead — one who would compare to the original’s but could hold his own. Enter Stephen Amell.
“All I can say about Stephen Amell is that I knew within 12 seconds of his audition that he was Ted Black,” says Korsh. “I was sure of it then, and having worked with him through six episodes, I’m even surer of it now.”
Amell and I meet on the Los Angeles set on the last Friday of January 2025, exactly one year since his audition, with Amell at the top of the call sheet. “Suits LA,” produced by UCP, is set to debut on NBC on Feb. 23. Amell, 43, is about an hour out from his glam call — “I’ve got to get rid of this hat hair before they get here,” he says, rubbing his head — as we sit in his makeshift trailer parked outside CAA in Century City, where they’re filming.
Since 2004, when he got his first TV role — as a spinning instructor on Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” — Amell has worked steadily. It was in 2009 that he landed the starring role of Green Arrow in The CW’s DC superhero drama “Arrow,” playing a wealthy crime-fighting vigilante living a double life. On top of everything else that goes into being the lead on a TV show — the acclaim, the hours — for Amell, the eight years on “Arrow” were also a time of self-discovery. A time when he learned how much fan engagement is too much, when to speak up … and when to shut up.
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At the time, the Toronto-born actor felt like he’d been “shot out of a cannon.” Though he says he’s extremely grateful for “Arrow,” Amell admits he never really enjoyed shooting 10 months out of the year. So what did he learn about how to lead a show?
“How long do we have?” he says with a laugh.
“The first two or three years of ‘Arrow,’ I was gripping so tight. I was white-knuckling it,” Amell continues. “The hours were long. By the time we got to the fifth episode of the first season, I’d worked more on that show than I’d ever worked on anything in my life.”
“I was never a monster,” he adds emphatically. “I was never disrespectful — but I had a short fuse. And you learn as you go.”
Amell had made himself very accessible to fans. He regularly engaged in conversations on social media and attended dozens of fan conventions.
But he was too accessible. “There used to be a lot of hypercritical people, specifically with ‘Arrow.’ I would see it and almost try to police it,” he says. Sometimes he’d even DM with viewers, asking them why they felt a certain way. These interactions were never productive and only lodged the negative comments in his head.
“Social media has become a zero-sum game — there is no winning,” Amell says now. “I learned the hard way.”
There were upsides to being so engaged. Amell guesses that he’s met 100,000 fans at conventions — “That number might be low,” he says on second thought — and he can remember only two in-person meetings that weren’t wholly positive.
“The internet’s not the real world,” he says, as if reminding himself more than telling me.
At last, he’s quit the habit of reading other people’s opinions. He hasn’t, however, stopped sharing his own.
Before “Arrow” aired its final episode in 2020, Amell already had booked his next leading role, charismatic wrestler Jack Spade in Starz’s “Heels.” In July 2023, two weeks before the show’s second season premiered, SAG-AFTRA went on strike.
Days after the sophomore season debuted, Amell attended a fan convention and said on a panel that while he supported his union, he felt striking was a “reductive negotiating tactic” and “myopic.” As the strike wore on, actors such as George Clooney eventually worked back channels to help bring the labor stoppage to an end. But Amell was the first well-known star to speak out against SAG-AFTRA’s decision to walk out — and the backlash was immediate.
“Not everything that comes to my mind should be spoken into a microphone,” he says now of what he calls a “catastrophic” time for actors, writers and crew members, thousands of whom picketed in the blazing Los Angeles heat for more than four months. “I still think that striking is the nuclear option — that was the point that I was trying to make. I just think I need to be a little bit more patient.
“I don’t subscribe to the whole idea of ‘You’re an actor — stay in your lane.’ But I think that I need to do a better job of really thinking about what I say publicly and the potential impact that it could have. It felt like the world was ending. To be at the eye of an internet storm like that — everything is really small, and you feel like everyone’s looking at you. I literally thought I was being side-eyed at the gym or dropping my kids off at school.”
After the fallout, Amell joined the picket line in New York. He also communicated with SAG-AFTRA leadership, he says.
And last summer, he filmed a movie, “Little Lorraine,” with Sean Astin, a member of the SAG-AFTRA national board. Amell assumed he was “public enemy No. 1.” Instead, Astin told him he should consider joining the board. The whole incident made Amell realize that, “as opposed to criticizing from the sidelines,” he could be “more effective and helpful.”
Until he was cast for “Suits LA,” Amell “absolutely worried” about the ramifications his remarks could have on his career. And now, he knows the responsibility he carries — not only for himself, but for the network, the crew and the series overall. “I’m part of a team, and there are a lot of people counting on me,” he says. “I could stand to be more thoughtful.”
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Stephen Amell isn’t unlike Ted Black. He’s confident, and he steps up to help those in need. Yet Ted has a complicated past, and the show’s pilot episode hints at the secrets he’s keeping, including what happened before he landed his fancy Hollywood job.
Amell isn’t wearing a mask anymore, but Ted certainly is.
To his colleagues — including criminal lawyer and best friend Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) and up-and-comers Rick Dodson (Bryan Greenberg) and Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis) — Ted has the bravado one would expect from a clean-shaven, Tom Ford-wearing lawyer.
“Behind closed doors, he’s a scared little boy, and nobody — I mean nobody — knows it,” Amell says. “That’s not a sustainable way to live life. He’s not comfortable in his own skin.”
Amell is still finding his footing, he says. He’s not used to a role that’s more cerebral than physical, one in which he’s not pulling a muscle or stepping aside for a stuntman.
“The only muscle on my body that hurts from shooting this show is my brain,” he says. “You wouldn’t think that you’d be as tired from five heavy, dialogue-rich scenes as you would from a day of stunts, but you are.”
The show’s tone is also challenging, requiring him to strike a balance between its dramatic and comedic elements. The original series found a way to achieve that: Slick, attractive characters delivered crisp legal jargon without coming off overly didactic. Or like a parody.
“Where’s the line between ‘You’re dancing right on the edge’ and ‘This could be an “SNL” sketch’?” Amell says, pondering. “You have to play a character, but not play a caricature. How far do you push it?”
As he navigates this new chapter in his career, he approaches everything as a learning experience — and embraces every new obstacle.
“It’s easier to yell at people and threaten their lives in a gravelly voice with a mask and a hood on than it is to subtly manipulate someone into doing what you want,” Amell says. “The hard, heavy lifting is threading a needle.”