Gina Torres is suiting up for Peacock…
Peacock is hoping to drive viewership to Pearson, the short-lived Suits spin-off starring the 54-year-old Cuban American actress, after the latter became a surprising hit on Netflix this summer.
The NBCUniversal streamer has officially added the show, which starred Torres as her Suits character Jessica Pearson, to its service. The hope: that new Suits fans may discover the spinoff as well, which isn’t available on Netflix.
Pearson ran for one season on the cable network in 2019 but was canceled a month and a half after its season ended.
Pearson centered on Torres’ powerhouse lawyer as she enters the dirty world of Chicago politics.
It also stars Bethany Joy Lenz, Morgan Spector, Chantel Riley, Simon Kassianides, Eli Goree and Isabel Arraiza.
Pearson originated on Suits, whose Season 7 finale served as a backdoor pilot for the spinoff.
The offshoot, which hailed from Universal Cable Productions, was executive produced by Suits creator and EP Aaron Korsh; Suits EP Daniel Arkin, who served as showrunner; Torres; and Suits executive producers Doug Liman, David Bartis and Gene Klein of Hypnotic.
The move will see NBCU try and win over some Netflix subscribers who may have binged (or be binging) parent show Suits, which has spent six weeks on top of the Nielsen charts.
Earlier this summer, the series broke a Nielsen streaming record for acquired programming; it drew 3.1B viewing minutes during the week of June 26 to July 2 across Netflix and Peacock. The first season of the show was also watched for 27.7M hours in the w/c June 19 after being added to Netflix and stayed in that streamer’s top ten for a number of weeks.