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Patrick J. Adams knew it was time to leave "Suits" after a conversation with his mom.
On Tuesday's episode of "Dinner's on Me" with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the Canadian-American actor said his character's storyline on the legal drama had played out by the end of the seventh season.
"It just all had happened, and I was like, where do we go from here?" said Adams, who played Mike Ross, a Harvard Law School dropout turned unlicensed lawyer.
At that point, he knew his costar and on-screen partner, Meghan Markle, was leaving the show. "And I was like, the only reason to do this was money," he said.
The "Plan B" actor talked to his mom and thought she would ask him to stay. "It was like, financially, you have to do this. It's responsible. You've already put in this much time. Just put in two more years," he recalled. "But really, she was the one who was like, 'Is the only reason you're doing this for money?'"
Adams added that he had no issue with anyone on the show. "It was just like, I've done it. When you reach the end of the thing, there's nothing more. I don't know what else to offer," he said. His mom responded, "Then you should go. You should be done," he recalled.
While Adams left the show after the seventh season in 2018, Gabriel Macht, who plays Harvey Spector, stayed on for the final two seasons.
"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about the money that Gabriel made those last two years," Adams said. "But I never regretted the decision for a second. I knew it was the right thing for my marriage."
Adams, who married "Pretty Little Liars" star Troian Bellisario in 2016, had been in a long-distance relationship with her for seven years.
"It was time for us to start our lives. We wanted to be together. We wanted to have kids, which we knew would take a couple of years before we were comfortable doing that," Adams said.
The longer he stayed in Toronto to work on the show, the longer he was "putting on hold this life that I knew I wanted," he said. "It was time to realize that money is great, but, you know, I'd made enough money that I could go and have my life now."
First released in 2011, "Suits" experienced a resurgence in popularity after being rereleased on streaming platforms like Netflix. Nielsen, a media audience analytics firm, found that the show topped its list as the most-streamed television series last year, with 57.7 billion minutes streamed on Netflix and Peacock.
With its resurgence, the show's creator, Aaron Korsh, is developing a spin-off show called "Suits L.A.," which features Macht. Adams is not part of its cast.
A representative for Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
In the corporate world, feeling unfulfilled in your job may indicate that it's time to move on.
AJ Eckstein told BI that he left his 6-figure consultant job in his dream company after feeling unfulfilled.
"When I started, my self-worth was high, buoyed by the excitement of a new career. As the years passed and my fulfillment waned, my sense of self-worth plummeted, too," he said. He eventually decided to leave his job to build a startup. " Leaving a stable job is risky, but so is staying when you feel unfulfilled," he said.
Similarly, Ashley Tan left her job as a JP Morgan analyst after feeling like she was wasting her life.
"I found it frustrating to have to stick to the old ways of doing things and I didn't feel fulfilled because I knew I didn't want to pursue marketing long-term," she said. Upon quitting, she decided to travel and explore DJing.
"I realize it's up to me to make the life I want a reality. It's been an enlightening change."
