Royals wouldn’t let Megan Markle say this word on ‘Suits’

“Suits” creator and executive producer Aaron Korsh is spilling secrets about Meghan Markle’s time on the USA Network legal drama — including one word Buckingham Palace wouldn’t let the future Duchess of Sussex say on the show.

Korsh told The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview that he was “as excited in some ways as everybody else” when Markle started dating Prince Harry while she was still playing paralegal-turned-associate Rachel Zane on “Suits.”

“I mean, your initial reaction is, like, ‘We’re dating a prince!’” the TV writer said with a laugh.

Soon, though, Korsh started getting notes from Markle’s future in-laws. “I will say, and I think Harry put this in the book, because I heard people talking about it — [the royal family] weighed in on some stuff,” he recalled. “Not many things, by the way, but a few things that we wanted to do and couldn’t do, and it was a little irritating.”

One of those things was Rachel saying the word “poppycock,” as in “nonsense.” Korsh told THR that he wrote that word into a “Suits” scene with Rachel and Mike (Patrick J. Adams) as a tribute to his wife’s family, for whom “poppycock” is a buzzword.

“We were going to have [Rachel] say, ‘My family would say poppycock.’ And the royal family did not want her saying the word,” Korsh said. “They didn’t want to put the word ‘poppycock’ in her mouth.”

Korsch’s recollection is that the royal family was concerned that people would edit the scene to make it appear that Markle was only saying the last four letters of poppycock.

“I had some sympathy because I wouldn’t want somebody doing that to her either,” Korsh said. “And the thing is, I didn’t think anybody really would, but also I don’t know. People are crazy.”

So Korsh had Rachel say “bulls–t” instead. “And I did not like it because I’d told my in-laws that [poppycock] was going to be in the show,” he said.

The “Suits” mastermind also doesn’t know how the royal family got a hold of the scripts from the show, and he only heard the feedback secondhand. “It might have been the directing producer at the time, or her agent,” he said. “Whoever it was, they didn’t like having to tell me any more than I liked having to hear it.”

“Suits” ran from 2011 to 2019, with Markle starring in the first seven of its nine seasons. The legal drama became a sensation on Netflix this summer, with 20 billion viewing minutes on the streaming platform as of July 30, as Deadline reported last week.