‘The Royal Family did not want her saying the word’: ‘Suits’ creator reveals the monarchy shut down Meghan Markle’s dicey dialogue

As the biggest show on all of streaming that shattered viewership records for weeks on end, there’s clearly a whole lot of people out there who can’t get enough of Suits.

Sadly, the creatives behind the legal drama aren’t seeing their fair share of profits, but the audience is there to ensure that talk of a potential revival continues lurking just under the surface. It’s not the main reason, but it can’t be discounted that public fascination with Meghan Markle is one of the many driving forces behind its renaissance, even if creator Aaron Korsh revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that the British monarchy ended up having a say in the scripts.

“I will say, and I think Harry put this in the book, because I heard people talking about it — [the Royal Family] weighed in on some stuff. Not many things, by the way, but a few things that we wanted to do and couldn’t do, and it was a little irritating.”

What was it that the folks from the palace didn’t want her to say? Incredibly, it was the world “poppycock,” with Korsh sharing his thoughts as to why they wanted such an innocuous phrase removed.

“I remember one was a particular line of dialogue and, look, I’ll just say what the line was. My wife’s family, when they have a topic to discuss that might be sensitive, they use the word, “poppycock.” Let’s say you wanted to do something that you knew your husband didn’t want to do, but you wanted to at least discuss it, and in just discussing it, you wouldn’t hold him to anything he said, you’d be like, “It’s poppycock.”  

So, in the episode, Mike and Rachel were going to have a thing, and as a nod to my in-laws, we were going to have her say, “My family would say poppycock.” And the Royal Family did not want her saying the word. They didn’t want to put the word “poppycock” in her mouth. I presume because they didn’t want people cutting things together of her saying “cock.” So, we had to change it to “bullsh*t” instead of “poppycock,” and I did not like it because I’d told my in-laws that [poppycock] was going to be in the show. There was maybe one or two more things, but I can’t remember.”

In the eyes of the Royal Family, then, “bullsh*t” is fine but “poppycock” is not. Korsh even said “I was aware that they were reading them because I got the feedback,” but he’s got no clue how the Queen’s underlings were securing the teleplays for Suits before certain scenes had even been shot, which makes it all the more bizarre.