Patrick J. Adams

The Firing That Saved a Career

Patrick J. Adams nearly gave up in 2010. He had been let go from the set of an NBC comedy, and he felt Los Angeles was too hostile a place for a kid from Toronto. Then he got his hands on the script for a series about lawyers who didn't even have law degrees.

His audition for Suits was not that of a star. He arrived with the anger of someone with nothing to lose, and that attitude fit the character of Mike Ross perfectly. The casting process was quick because the chemistry with Gabriel Macht was evident from the first minute in the room.

Nearly one hundred episodes later, his face was on billboards around the world.

The show became a global phenomenon and ran for nine seasons on air. Adams starred in seven of them and returned for the final episode. Over those years, he learned to direct episodes and began to understand that the industry worked better when he took control of the camera.

And the gamble paid off.

Because Adams never wanted to be just the flavor of the month on cable television. In 2016 he married fellow actress Troian Bellisario, and together they chose to keep a low profile away from the spotlight of gossip magazines. His refuge has always been analog photography and theater stages, where the pay is much lower but the respect is real.

Behind the camera

During his years filming in Toronto, the actor dedicated himself to documenting everything that happened behind the cameras. These were not simple keepsake photos. His images captured the loneliness of the sets and the exhaustion of the crews during fifteen-hour days.

These photographs were exhibited in art galleries and published in specialized books. Photography is his true obsession, and he usually carries Leica or Hasselblad cameras wherever he goes. For him, the still image is a way to pause the frantic pace demanded by industrial television production.

Before shooting each scene, he would analyze the light like a director of photography.

In 2020 he went for a complete change of pace with the series The Right Stuff. He played astronaut John Glenn in a production that aimed to recapture the epic spirit of the space race. The series did not achieve the commercial run it was expected to, but it helped film casting directors start seeing him in a new light.

The return to the New York stage

Theater has always been his creative home base. In 2022, he made his Broadway debut in Take Me Out, playing a baseball player in a story loaded with racial tension and homophobia. New York critics were emphatic in their praise, and the production won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

That stage work restored his confidence to take on riskier projects on the small screen. In 2023 he took part in the series Plan B, a Canadian drama about time travel that explored the ethical consequences of changing the past. It was a demanding shoot in Montreal that required a level of emotional intensity he had not shown during his years as a television lawyer.

But the market rules.

In 2024, it was announced that he had joined the cast of Wayward, a Netflix production set at a boarding school with the feel of a psychological thriller. Patrick J. Adams signed on looking for characters with more shadows and fewer expository lines. His salary per episode has remained in the six-figure range for more than a decade.

The production of this series moved to various locations across Canada under strict confidentiality measures. The final budget for the first season exceeded fifty million dollars.