The Suits La star Azita Ghanizada has a strange connection to the original series

Suits LA has been airing since February 23, 2025, and NBC attempts to bring the sharp-edged world of high-powered law back to primetime—this time with a West Coast twist. Created by Suits mastermind Aaron Korsh, the spinoff centers on Ted Black, played by Stephen Amell, a former New York federal prosecutor who’s now running a crisis-hit firm in Los Angeles.

The show kicks off with Ted trying to salvage his firm, Black Lane Law, after his co-founder Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) walks out with half the lawyers and clients. Ted's personal life is just as messy, and the series slowly peels back what exactly happened in his past that made him leave everything behind in New York.

The cast also includes Lex Scott Davis as Erica Rollins and Bryan Greenberg as Rick Dodsen. One of the standouts so far is Azita Ghanizada, who plays Roslyn—Ted’s fiercely loyal secretary and longtime partner in the business.

Roslyn holds the firm together while Ted spirals through legal and emotional chaos. And while Ghanizada wasn’t in the original Suits, she has a surprising off-screen connection to the original cast that goes back to the pilot days in Toronto.

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Azita Ghanizada’s Suits connection started in Toronto long before Suits LA

In an interview with ScreenRant published on April 4, 2025, Suits LA star Azita Ghanizada opened up about her unexpected connection to the original Suits series despite never having appeared in it.

While promoting her role as Roslyn, Ted Black’s longtime secretary and right hand at the firm, Ghanizada revealed that she was actually in Toronto in 2010, filming the pilot for another show—Alphas—at the same time and in the same place Suits was shooting its pilot.

“We shot the pilot the same time as the Suits pilot shot in Toronto,” she said. “So we were up there together.”

Ghanizada starred alongside David Strathairn, Malik Yoba, and Mahershala Ali on Alphas, and their group often crossed paths with the original Suits cast during those early days.

“I spent some time with the original cast back then, and we were all in Canada,” she explained. “We only lasted two seasons, and they carried on.”

Even though Suits went on to become a hit and Ghanizada’s show didn’t, she stayed in the industry and eventually became a fan of Suits during its streaming resurgence during the 2023 actor strike.

“I was a late watcher with everybody else,” she said. “I got to watch it like everybody else in one sitting.”

Years later, when Suits LA came up, she felt an immediate pull.

She told her agent, “I belong in this world. I am so legally minded, this feels really right for me.”

When she landed the audition, she kept her past connection to herself—at least at first. But creator Aaron Korsh remembered.

“He was like, ‘Wait, did I meet you in Toronto?” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I didn’t want to say anything.’”

Beyond that full-circle moment, Ghanizada also opened up about Roslyn’s dynamic with Ted in the new series. She explained that, unlike Donna in the original series, Roslyn has been with Ted through the rise—helping him become name partner.

“We’ve done that. We played that game together for a long time,” she said.

She doesn’t see Roslyn as a secretary in the traditional sense.

She sees her as Ted’s partner, someone who has invested in his vision and stuck around to keep the whole thing standing when it started to fall apart.

She also teased that Roslyn’s role expands in upcoming episodes.

“She is a mirror to him for his best self and his worst self,” Ghanizada explained.

And fans should keep an eye out for Episode 12, which she says had her “spit-laughing in a coffee shop.”

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Watch Suits LA on Peacock.