‘Suits’ Spinoff Casts ‘Homeland’s’ Morgan Spector, ‘The Mindy Project’ Actress Rebecca Rittenhouse

“Homeland” actor Morgan Spector and “The Mindy Project” actress Rebecca Rittenhouse are set to guest-star in “Suits” Season 7 finale, which will serve as a backdoor pilot for the potential spinoff series centered on Gina Torres’ “Suits” character, Jessica Pearson.

According to Deadline, Spector and Rittenhouse will play two of the three new key characters that will be introduced in the “Suits” season ender. Both of their characters are expected to continue should the pilot for the spinoff goes to series.

Spector will portray Mayor Bobby Golec, the handsome, charismatic and enigmatic working class mayor of Chicago who is up for re-election in six months. Rittenhouse, meanwhile, will appear as Keri Allen, a driven and ambitious city attorney who serves as the unofficial right hand to Mayor Golec.

Unlike “Suits,” the potential offshoot will not be a legal drama. Instead, it will tell the new chapter of Jessica’s life as she enters the world of Chicago politics.

According to the official logline for the backdoor pilot, Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman), Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) and Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle) reunite with their former boss and friend Jessica as she adjusts to her new life in the Windy City. When she is forced to enter the dirty world of Chicago politics, Jessica must rely on her legal wits and valiant relationships from her old colleagues at Pearson Specter Litt to navigate this unknown territory.

“Jessica is going to get in a tangle and a tussle with some Chicago politics players,” “Suits” creator Aaron Korsh — who will co-create the potential spinoff along with his longtime “Suits” collaborator Daniel Arkin — told Deadline last August of what will happen in the pilot. “They will be of different levels, from the Mayor on down, and maybe not all will be directly involved in politics, we may have a real estate developer or someone of that type, and some power brokers within the city and maybe further a little down the rung in that world. As we go though the spinoff episode, at the end hopefully you’ll have a great idea of what her future is moving forward and who’s a potential ally and who’s a potential enemy in her world.”

As revealed by Korsh last March, the idea for the potential spinoff was actually pitched by Torres herself after she left “Suits” as a series regular in the middle of Season 6.

“‘Shawshank Redemption’ is one of my all-time favorite movies. And there is a line in it where Morgan Freeman’s character Red, basically says that in prison, hope is a dangerous thing,” Torres said in a statement of how her idea for the potential spinoff came about. “Well, such is the life of an actor. But every now and then, if you’re lucky, you get a miracle. ‘Suits’ was one such miracle. And then I had the audacity to not just hope, but dream up another. Is there a world where we follow Jessica's story? Who is this woman, REALLY? And what’s next? And then [NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment execs] Chris McCumber and Jeff Wachtel and Aaron Korsh said, ‘Let's do it....now.’”

“Suits” Season 7 finale, which will be directed by Anton Cooper, will air in the first quarter of 2018.