25-05-2025
Suits Alum Sarah Rafferty: My TV Goal Now Is to ‘Not Do the Moms Dirty'
In addition to wrangling a sizable herd of fictional sons on Netflix's My Life With the Walter Boys, Sarah Rafferty says her role as Walter family matriarch Katherine includes being 'hypervigilant' about the way mothers are portrayed in popular media.
The young adult series follows Jackie, a 15-year-old girl who abruptly relocates to Colorado from New York City after her family dies in a car accident. Rafferty's character, who was Jackie's mother's best friend, brings the grieving girl to live with her large family out west.
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The drama was renewed for Season 3 in May. Season 2 is slated for release sometime in 2025.
'It's a family show that a lot of parents are watching with their kids,' Rafferty explained at the recent Women's Health Summit in Los Angeles, organized by our sister site Flow Space. And because multiple generations are paying attention, 'I'm pretty hypervigilant about making sure we get away from any kind of tropes that undermine women.'
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In the video above, Rafferty recalled a day during shooting in which a director's shorthand caught her attention.
'A director was just, she just had to get on with the day, and she was being really quick,' Rafferty said. 'But she was like, 'Respond to Mom like Mom's the scary one, and like Dad's the fun one.' …I was like, 'Let's not do that.''
She went on to say that, while making the Netflix drama, she's been involved in 'really great conversations on set about how to represent the moms that are spinning all the plates.' And after her nine-season run in USA Network's glossy, highly stylized Suits, 'What I think is important now for me to bring to this character is that she's a mom, she's a vet, she's got all these adopted and biological kids, and it's messy, and she gets it wrong sometimes,' the actress added. 'There's opportunities, in getting it wrong, for repair.'
She acknowledged that that type of verisimilitude isn't always what networks want. 'But if I could just find moments of realness to just not do the moms dirty,' she said, 'that motivates me.'
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