Gina Torres was a fan-favourite on the long-running series Suits, playing legal partner Jessica Pearson. Therefore viewers were sad to see her go when she left in season six, before going on to star in her own spin-off show Pearson. Here’s everything the actor has revealed about the decision to leave.

Why did Jessica Pearson actor Gina Torres leave Suits?

Jessica Pearson (played by Gina Torres) first made her appearance in the pilot episode of Suits.

Playing a managing partner at the firm, viewers watched her journey over the seasons as she rose up the legal ranks.

Her story ended on the original series when a case with Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle) led her to reconsider why she became a lawyer in the first place.

The episode, which formed the mid-season finale of the sixth season, saw her save the life of a death-row inmate before quitting the firm.

The actor opened up on why she decided to leave Suits originally in an interview with The New York Times.

She said: “My contract was up, so this wasn’t a power play that went terribly wrong.”

Torres explained to the publication that her constant travelling between filming in Toronto and her home in Los Angeles has taken its toll.

Therefore her decision to leave was partly to spend more time with her daughter with ex-husband Laurence Fishburne.

She added: “I think the public doesn’t understand the rigours of shooting a show for an actor, much less when you’re on location and away from home.

“At one point I approached Aaron [Korsh, the showrunner,] and said, ‘It’s not that I don’t love the show and love Jessica, who is my alter ego. But my life is my life, and I need to take care of it.’”

Initially there was an idea to kill off her character as she left, according to Korsh who revealed all to The Hollywood Reporter.

He said: “In my mind, Jessica was going to make this decision to go off into the sunset with Jeff Malone (DB Woodside).

“Father Larry Marsden (Colin Glazer), who was a little bit crazy and accosted Rachel and got broken on the stand, was going to bring a gun and go nuts and kill her.

“I didn’t think we were going to see it; we were going to hear about it. It was going to shatter everyone and we were going to do a two-year time jump afterwards.”

Thankfully it was left open-ended as Torres landed her own spin-off show Pearson, which began airing earlier this year.

This set up her new storyline in the series, which began airing earlier this year and sees Jessica as she enters the world of Chicago politics.

Speaking about her decision to return, she told TV Line: “You know, I had absolutely no desire to revisit the character when I left Suits.

“I thought I was done, and then some time went by, and I started thinking about her, and I started thinking about what she might be doing, and it just happened to coincide with the 2016 election.

“Politics, it was like must-watch TV. It was just insanity, all the things that were happening, and I started thinking about Jessica, what she might do in the political arena, because of her skill set, because of what she’s so good at, and that was the seed that gave us this.”

However, Torres has not returned to Suits since and was also not back for the series finale of the show, which aired last month on the USA Network.

Showrunner Korsh told Deadline that this was purely to do with scheduling after they had finished shooting Pearson.

He said: “Gina Torres, Jessica, she was worn out from the shooting of Pearson. We did have a scene for her.

“With her schedule, we couldn’t make it work. That’s really probably the one I would have liked to have had.”

Suits seasons 1-9 are available to stream on Netflix.

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