‘Pearson’ suits Gina Torres perfectly
Gina Torres lives by one rule: Never say never.
It looked like the New York native had left the legal world of “Suits” behind in 2016 after the midseason finale of the USA Network series when her character quit the firm. Torres had signed on to join the cast of the ABC drama “The Catch” for its second season and had tired of traveling from Los Angeles to Toronto, where “Suits” filmed.
When “The Catch” ended after the second season, Torres kept working until she got the call to reprise the role she had played on “Suits,” but this time as the star of the series. That production, “Pearson,” airs Wednesdays on USA Network.
“I didn’t walk away from ‘Suits’ saying ‘never’ because clearly, I kept coming back a few times through the course of the last few seasons. But I didn’t expect the character to be the star of a new show,” Torres says.
“What’s really so wonderful about this show, I get to have this second chance with Jessica Pearson that you now get to see a fully realized human being, a fully fleshed out woman, and what it costs her to stay at the top of her game, to maintain relationships, interpersonal relationships, whether they’re professional or whether they’re personal.
“We never really got to see that. It was always in service to the firm. But now she’s in service to her own life, and what does that mean and how does that look?”
In the spinoff, the recently disbarred Pearson adjusts to the dog-eat-dog world of Chicago politics.
She is the newly appointed fixer for Mayor Bobby Novak (Morgan Spector), which puts Pearson in major moral dilemmas.
It was easy for Torres to step back into the role that had earned her an ALMA Award, an Imagen Award and the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Award for Outstanding Performance in a Television Series and the Visionary Award from the LA Femme Film Festival.
She was ready to continue playing the character because there was so much more she wanted to do with the role. It’s an added bonus the series is filmed in Los Angeles so she doesn’t have to travel so much.
“We know so little about Jessica in the world of ‘Suits.’ She didn’t have a family of her own. She didn’t have an enduring relationship. There were still so many doors that were unopened into her psyche, into her personal life,” Torres says. “The one thing you saw when she exited the firm was that she wanted to get back to what mattered to her. The reason she got into law in the first place.
“We are asking you to go along this journey with her as she figures out who she is now. I don’t feel like I am playing the same character in a lot of ways.”
Torres knows about playing wildly different characters, having starred in high-concept shows like “Alias,” “Angel,” “Cleopatra 2525” and “Firefly.”
The long list of guest starring credits for Torres includes “24,” “The Shield,” “Gossip Girl,” “Hannibal” and “Flash Forward.” She’s also voiced the roles of Vixen in “The Justice League” series and Superwoman in “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.”
Film credits include “The Matrix Reloaded” and “I Think I Love My Wife.”
Although she’s worked in both TV and film, Torres will always look at television as her first acting love. The one thread that runs through all her work is she’s drawn to playing strong and powerful women.
“Because the nature of television allows more of a protracted arc for any given character, there’s more of an opportunity for you to get to know a strong woman in a more fleshed-out way,” says Torres. “Where in film, they are usually the woman behind the man behind the woman. She comes in, she makes whatever magic she needs to make and then she’s out. With television, you get to spend more time with those characters, and there is just more opportunity. There’s more to do.”