Were you surprised by who turned Mike in? In Suits Season 5 Episode 12, “Live to Fight…,” Mike and Harvey confronted those who knew his secret in the search for the person who ratted him out. And it turned out not to be any of the most likely suspects.
Spoiler alert: This interview contains spoilers from “Live to Fight…,” including the identity of who turned Mike in.
BuddyTV talked to Executive Producer Aaron Korsh about why Anita Gibbs (Leslie Hope) is so determined in this case, the consequences of Sheila’s (Rachael Harris) betrayal and and whether Mike’s case will be resolved by season’s end.
Anita Gibbs definitely has it out for Mike, but also for Harvey and Jessica. Is there an underlying reason why she’s so gung-ho on this specific case?
I’m going to answer that in a couple different ways. First of all, Mike broke the law, right? Some of it is that it’s her job to prosecute people who broke the law. And she suspects both Harvey and Jessica did also.
Number two is if Mike was pretending to be an accountant, he would have broken the law. But he’s actually being a fraud at the thing that Anita Gibbs does. From that level, she put in the hard work and effort it takes to become a lawyer and he’s doing exactly what she does but has skipped the path. That makes it a little bit deeper, right? And Harvey and Jessica were complicit in allowing that to happen.
On top of that and this is revealed later, but I’ll say it now. The big thing– you know how they always say it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. She realizes that once Harvey went down this path of hiring a fraud, it made him vulnerable to being blackmailed or extorted by anybody who found out that secret and it’s not just that he hired a fraud, it’s what did he do? What has he done? What is he willing to do to cover up that secret over the years?
And that’s why she’s really like, “If you would do this, it leaves you vulnerable to somebody making you do something far worse.” And that’s why she can’t let this thing stand. And that’s why she has the big target on Harvey and Jessica.
At this point, there are so many people who know and so many people who are being convinced or manipulated or questioned in order to keep the secret. Is that about to combust?
[Laughs] Sure feels that way, doesn’t it? Shortly after Episode 12, Gibbs is going to continue her strategy of sort of trying to fracture the inner core and the inner circle to get them to turn on each other. Eventually, we’ll be able to thwart her in a lot of those ways. We aren’t going to be able to get out of this completely.
Eventually we’ll force her and be forced to meet her, so to speak, in the ring. We aren’t going to be able to win this battle before it’s fought. We’re going to have to fight this in the ring and the ring is court. That’s going to happen. The question is: Can we beat her there? She’s pretty good there, but so are we?
With Sheila, the reveal of it being someone who actually didn’t know the truth, but just found out was a nice twist and then her betrayal of Louis cut deep. Will we see a Sheila-Louis confrontation?
First of all, let me say to that, I wanted it to be– There were a lot of pitches on who it should be that handed Mike in. The funny thing is if it were left to me and me alone, I might not have occurred to me to find out who did it. I’m not sure if in reality you would ever know who handed him in if it was an anonymous tip, right? If you commit a crime and you get arrested for a murder or burglary, you’re never going to know who called the police. They’re never going to tell you.
I wanted it to be someone who wasn’t handing him in for any sort of personal gain or any sort of self-serving purpose. The reason she handed him in is because this guy didn’t go to my beloved university, I found out and I’m letting them know. She didn’t do it for her own good. She did it anonymously because she was ashamed she didn’t catch it earlier. She was like, “This is a crime. I’m reporting it.”
I didn’t want it to be someone getting revenge or a father trying to break him up with Rachel or anything like that. That’s what I liked about it being Sheila. She came across it, she discovered a crime, she did the right thing. No one has done that all these years. Everyone has either let him off the hook out of sympathy like Claire or used it to get something they wanted like Louis or like Rachel forgave him because she loved him.
Will there be consequences? Absolutely. First of all, Louis will confront Sheila, but he may end up being surprised by something. I’ll just say this, Anita Gibbs doesn’t always tell the truth. So it is a betrayal to Louis in Episode 12, but keep in mind Anita Gibbs doesn’t always tell the truth nor does she have to. He will confront Sheila and there will absolutely be consequences to her actions, but there will be a twist.
Will the season end on a cliffhanger or will be know if Mike gets away with it? Will there be a final conclusion to this storyline?
Yes, there will be a resolution to this issue by the end of the season. There is sort of a cliffhanger, maybe two. There’s one thing that may be unexpected and then there’s another thing that’s hopefully unexpected and could be considered a cliffhanger, but it’s certainly a twist. That’s how I would describe it. It’s not necessarily like Mike getting arrested that big of a cliffhanger. I hope it packs a punch.
Suits airs Wednesdays at 10pm on USA.
(Image courtesy of USA.)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
Contributing Editor and Writer for Collider, BuddyTV, TV Fanatic, CliqueClack, and other publications. TV criticism, reviews, interviews with actors and producers, and other related content. Founder of TV Diehard.
