See Patrick J. Adams and Sarah Rafferty’s ‘Suits’ Auditions (Exclusive)

Patrick J. Adams and Sarah Rafferty are looking back in time!

PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at Rafferty and Adams’ Suits auditions — and their reaction to the tapes — as they watch alongside casting director Bonnie Zane on their SiriusXM podcast, Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast. In the clip, Adams, who played Mike Ross, surprises Rafferty by first playing her audition for Donna Paulsen.

“Bonnie has brought with her, dear listener, our auditions,” he begins. “Sarah, I don’t know if you’re prepared for this, mentally or emotionally. I’ve never seen it. She texted it to us earlier this week, we both did not watch it, which is funny, we both independently were like, ‘Thanks so much,’ and did not watch it. And then we thought this might be, while deeply uncomfortable, a cathartic, cool thing to do together.”

As they play the video, Rafferty immediately reacts to the way she looked, saying, “Oh my God! Look at my hair!”

After watching her read a short scene, Adams compliments Rafferty’s performance and asks how it felt to watch.

“I’m in freeze, I’m in freeze,” she says. “Oh gosh, my heart hurts a little bit. God, I was young — I was young once! This is like the only time I’m going to go, ‘Yeah, I’d give that girl that part.’”

“Nice, yes, 100%,” Adams responds. “I’m glad that’s your reaction because that’s how I’m feeling.”

He then questions what Zane’s reaction in the casting room was to Rafferty’s audition, telling her to “be honest.”

“I loved the nonverbal,” Zane explains. “You just created a whole back story and front story, and there wasn’t a lot to do for Donna in that audition because there wasn’t a lot in the pilot for Donna, and you took that. And the mistake that actors make is, ‘Okay, I only have five pages, I only have three pages, I got to make a meal,’ and you just kind of laid it out there for what it was: simple, great. And that’s probably what sparked the initial interest.”

Reflecting on that time in her life, Rafferty reveals she had been thinking about quitting acting before she got the role on Suits, but she decided to give it one more chance.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll just go, I’ll fly myself to New York, I’ll get the Airbnb, let me give it a shot,’” she remembers. “‘It’s not working the usual way with the testing, the run it up the flag pole, the pilots aren’t getting picked up, you know, the thing is happening, so let’s try it this way.’”

“I’m glad you tried it,” Adams chimes in.

Rafferty also shares that at that audition, she could feel that there was “something more to this character” that went beyond the script, and once she got the part, she was able to dig deeper into who she felt Donna was.

“[It’s] actually one of those things that, in an audition, it’s useful, because it’s indicating there is more story here to tell,” Adams notes. “Then you get into the nuance of like, ‘Well, now we have a whole show.’” 

He then pulls up his own tape, joking that they had run out of time to play it. Looking at himself over a decade ago, he recalled his preparation for the audition.

“I bought this suit just for this audition – I still have it,” Adams says. “It does not fit, not even close, but I remember I went and spent a good amount of money on a suit, and I did not have money to spend. But I was like,’ I need an actual, real-life grown-up suit.’”

The scene was longer than Rafferty’s and showed Mike trying to get hired by Harvey Specter, who ended up being played by Gabriel Macht. When it ends, Rafferty and Zane applaud Adams as he exclaims, “Woah. Woah.”

“I’m sort of speechless,” he says. “I’m very proud of that little… I am so nervous. And you said you don’t see it and I can see that you don’t see it, I know how nervous I am. I know I’m in that room and I know that part of the gig is looking not nervous when you are actually super terrified.”

“That’s fun to watch,” he adds before Rafferty says, “But also, it’s it’s fueling your auditions, fueling the performance. You use it.”

“Yes, I’m using it rather than trying to deny it,” he agrees. “I’m embracing that he would be nervous too, but he’s also determined to get this job. And I’ve talked about it before, I can see that thing that I’m doing where I’m like, ‘I can just ask this room full of people for this job the same way that Mike’s asking Harvey for the job.’”

Zane then revealed that “he was cast immediately after that,” and they didn’t look for anyone else to take the role.

“Oh God, that’s great,” Adams says.

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Suits is available to stream on Netflix.