Stephen Amell talks nerves ahead of ‘Suits: L.A.’ audition

As previously reported, NBC is spinning off the former USA Network show-turned-Netflix phenomenon Suits into a new show, Suits: L.A. 

“It’s cool that there’s a nice hype around the project,” says its star, Stephen Amell, who gave ABC Audio a peek behind the scenes.

According to NBC, Amell will be playing Ted Black, “a former federal prosecutor from New York who moved to Los Angeles to reinvent himself by representing powerful clients in the City of Angels.”

That said, “his firm is at a crisis point,” the network continues.

Speaking of crisis, Amell tells ABC Audio he had one right before auditioning for the role.

Following a long run leading CW’s Arrow-verse, the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, Amell said he was a little rusty. “Went in, first in-person audition that I had done in, I don’t know, close to a decade,” he recalls.

“Oh my God,” he continues, “I had a total mental breakdown before the audition. I had been alone with my kids all week. My wife was away and I … had gotten … some sort of, like, upsetting personal news. And I swear to God, right before the audition, I had a full meltdown.”

He recalled with a laugh, “And apparently it worked.”

Amell will be joined by The Walking Dead veteran Josh McDermitt for the pilot, the network just revealed.

He’ll be playing the “energetic, powerful, focused and self-absorbed” Stuart Lane. He’s “an old friend of Black’s, [who] fifteen years prior to the events of Suits: L.A. started a Los Angeles-based law firm called Black Lane Law that specializes in criminal and entertainment law.”

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