Sarah Rafferty's life off-screen from Meghan Markle bond to forgotten Grey's Anatomy role

WARNING: This article contains spoilers from My Life With the Walter Boys.

Sarah Rafferty, who stars in Netflix's hit show My Life With the Walter Boys, has been a busy actress both on and off screen long before her days on the hit teen drama.

Rafferty's character, Katherine Walter, serves as an adoptive mother figure to Jackie Howard (played by Nikki Rodriguez) right from the start, and this dynamic continues into season two.

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After a dramatic departure in the first season finale, Katherine encourages Jackie to return to Silver Falls, providing the support she needs to rebuild her life on the ranch.

As the second season premieres today, Thursday, August 28, let's delve deeper into the life of Sarah Rafferty, star of My Life With the Walter Boys.

Inside Sarah Rafferty's life Grey's Anatomy

While Rafferty is perhaps best known for her role as Donna Paulsen in the iconic series Suits, she also landed a role in another hit drama in 2020.

She appeared in a three-episode arc of ABC's longest-running medical drama Grey's Anatomy, playing a character named Suzanne Britland.

After undergoing an appendectomy, Suzanne began to exhibit some mysterious symptoms, leaving the surgeons puzzled about her condition.

Fortunately, Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) and Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) were able to diagnose her with Macrophage Activation syndrome, and she left the hospital fully recovered.

Health scare

Before her role as a patient in Grey's Anatomy, Rafferty had a real-life hospital experience when she contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite in 2017.

The actress suffered symptoms including fatigue, headaches, joint pain and memory issues.

Speaking at the Women's Health Summit in Los Angeles earlier this year, the 52 year old revealed: "I got in my car to go do a local errand, and I was like, 'where do I live?'

"Like, I couldn't read. I could read, like, the first line of the New York Times, and then I just couldn't continue. It was really rough."

Rafferty also shared: "I was grieving because... I was a mum. I had a 10 year old and a six year old when it started."

She continued: "This is the thing that I've been struggling with... [but] being able to talk about it has brought more and more community of other people who are going through the same thing."

Meghan Markle

Rafferty shared the limelight on Suits for seven seasons with Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, who played senior paralegal Rachel Zane.

Despite the Duchess no longer working as an actress, she maintains a close relationship with her former co-star, who attended both her wedding to Prince Harry and her baby shower in 2019.

Discussing the bond between herself, Markle and co-star Gina Torres, Rafferty previously told Today: "We called ourselves the sister wives.

"We were with each other for longer than we went to college or high school with our friends, so we became family in a way. We're still family."

Love life

Rafferty is wed to financial analyst Santtu Seppala, whom she encountered during their time as students at Yale University.

She was pursuing her MFA in acting whilst he was studying finance before later obtaining his MBA at The Wharton School.

The pair courted for several years before exchanging vows in June 2001 and welcomed two daughters, Oona in 2007 and Iris in 2012.

Speaking to Parents Canada in 2014, she said: "They are the light of my life. They are so outgoing and funny and silly.

"They love to sing and dance, they love each other and they are incredibly affectionate. They crack me up every single day."

My Life With the Walter Boys

Rafferty's character Katherine serves as the matriarch of the Walter household with a staggering 10 children at the ranch alongside Jackie.

Speaking at the Flow Space Women's Health Summit in Los Angeles, the actress revealed how crucial it was for her to avoid falling into outdated stereotypes when depicting mothers.

Rafferty explained: "I think I'm pretty hyper vigilant that we get away from any kind of tropes that undermine women.

"I think we've had some really great conversations about representing mums that are spinning all of the plates.

"She's a mum, she's a vet, she's got all these adopted and biological kids and it's messy and she gets it wrong sometimes and there's opportunities in getting it wrong for repair.

"Now, it's not always like that, that's not necessarily what the network always wants but if I can just find moments of realness, to just not do the mums dirty, that motivates me."

My Life With the Walter Boys is available to watch on Netflix.