Patrick J. Adams’ career took off when he landed his popular role as Mike Ross on the USA series Suits, where he remained for seven of the show's nine seasons. Fast forward to 2020, and Suits has ended following his return for a final season arc, and Adams is heading back to TV for a starring role in The Right Stuff. So, what made him join the Disney+ series after Suits?
The legal drama lost Patrick J. Adams and his on-screen love interest, Meghan Markle, ahead of Suits’ eighth season. Both actors decided to leave for quite different reasons. What were Adams’ reasons for joining The Right Stuff? It turns out that Adams was a long-time fan of Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book, and it was not rocket science from there as Adams told TVLine:
I just went, ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for, and suddenly, everything in my body woke up again, and all the systems went on, and all the switches flipped, and I was like, ‘If I can be a part of this, I would kill to do it.'
In The Right Stuff, Patrick J. Adams takes on the role of the multi-faceted real-life astronaut Major John Glenn, who was also a principled and devoted family man. Professionally speaking, he was a well-regarded test pilot when he was recruited to be part of NASA’s Project Mercury, which the Disney+ series chronicles. The Right Stuff marks Adams’ first lead role since Suits.
After leaving Suits, Patrick J. Adams had starred in a recurring capacity on the con-artist dramedy Sneaky Pete’s third and final season on Amazon Prime Video. When it came to The Right Stuff, it packed in everything that Adams was looking for in another TV project. Of course, it took him off course from his initial plans following Suits as Adams explained, saying:
I was looking to go to sleep for about 365 days. It’s sort of a joke, but it’s not far from the truth. I was really excited to be home and to not rush into something, to take a break. We [were] starting a family, and I’d been away from my wife for so long. I remember being of the mindset of, like, ‘I need to just take a moment and get used to being home and get back into the swing of that.’ So I was really excited to just hit pause and be able to enjoy the fact that I’d earned the rare ability, as an actor, to be patient, to wait until I was inspired again to do something.
When inspiration struck, it happened in a significant way. Patrick J. Adams’ excitement over The Right Stuff goes back to his early days reading the book, which his father gave him in his teens. While already adapted into a well-regarded film starring no less than Ed Harris as John Glenn, television offered another opportunity to tell the story.
You can understand why Patrick J. Adams was more than a little enthusiastic about taking on the role. The show will follow the media-dubbed “Mercury Seven” through their tumultuous journey. Game of Thrones’ Joe Dempsie was initially set to star opposite of Adams as Gordon Cooper. Due to issues with Dempsie’s visa, Once Upon a Time’s Colin O’Donoghue took over the role.
Thankfully for Patrick J. Adams, no such interference got in the way of him portraying John Glenn. He dedicated himself to studying Glenn as he prepared for the role meticulously. After arriving on set, Adams acknowledged that a lot of that preparation went out of the window in order to portray “the moment.”
Patrick J. Adams explained his reasons for reprising his role as Mike before Suits said goodbye. Now he has eloquently responded to why he pursued the new series. Disney+ subscribers should be in for a treat! The Right Stuff premieres October 9 with two new episodes kicking off the show’s run on the Disney streamer. The space drama is one of this fall’s premieres.
