'Suits' star Gina Torres compares Jessica

Suits fans may think of Jessica Pearson and Harvey Spector as partners, friends, or mentor and mentee — but to Gina Torres , they're more like mother and son.

The actress, who spent six seasons on the USA drama playing no-nonsense litigator Jessica and wrangling Gabriel Macht 's Harvey, recently reflected on the duo's complex dynamic. Joining former castmates Sarah Rafferty and Patrick J. Adams for an episode of their Suits rewatch podcast, Sidebar , Torres said it was "incredibly humbling" to establish the Harvey-Jessica relationship.

"It's so important and it looms so large — motherhood's like that," Torres said of her character's approach to working with Harvey. "You don't think about it. You just have to do it. You just have to, you know, guide this person as best you can and move them in certain directions that you hope would serve them."

She continued: "That was Jessica's story. Her job is to not rein him in, necessarily. Well, sometimes you did have to bring him in, but to remind him that 'This is the playing field, these are your gifts, and this is what needs to happen.'"

For Torres, that dynamic was "very clear" within any given episode... at least until things got "really messy" between the pair.

While Jessica was often in Harvey's corner — she paid his way through Harvard Law School after she discovered him working in her firm's mailroom — they didn't always see eye to eye. Where Jessica often opted for the least risky option, Harvey had a tendency to swing big and put everything — including the firm — on the line. A key example is the show's inciting incident, when Harvey hires Mike Ross (Adams) as an associate attorney even though he lacks a law degree.

Torres called that move "the ultimate betrayal" on Harvey's part. "I remember having these conversations with Gabriel, because he didn't get it," she recalled. "I said, 'You have no idea — it's like a teenager — you have no idea how hurtful you're being. You have no idea how painful this is for Jessica that Harvey's doing this.'"

Torres added that Macht would then come to Harvey's defense, but she'd swiftly shut him down. "I said, 'No, no, no, no, no.'"

That offscreen tension became fuel for the characters. "I think that ultimately helped our onscreen dynamic," Torres said. Pointing to her own journey with raising a child, she noted that dealing with Harvey "didn't feel very different from what I was doing at home."

After handling Harvey's troublemaking for six seasons, Torres departed the series for a Jessica-led spinoff, Pearson , which only lasted a single season.

Suits enjoyed a resurgence after arriving on Netflix and Peacock last year, unexpectedly breaking streaming records and topping Nielsen's streaming charts for months on end while the Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes essentially halted production and postproduction on new shows. In the wake of that success, another spinoff was announced: Suits: L.A. , which is set to star Stephen Amell as a former New York prosecutor who moves to Los Angeles to launch a new firm specializing in criminal and entertainment law.

Reacting to news of the spinoff in September, Torres told Entertainment Weekly, "I think it's fantastic. I hope they have a successful and as long a run as we did."

Listen to Torres on Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast above.