Scandal’s Columbus Short wanted Harrison to end up with Katie Lowes' Quinn: 'That would have been amazing'

Former Scandal actor Columbus Short has a romantic rewrite for Harrison Wright’s story. 

In an upcoming episode of the Scandal rewatch podcast, Unpacking The Toolbox, Short joins hosts Katie Lowes and Guillermo Diaz to discuss his 2014 exit from the show, after starring in its first three seasons. While his departure led to Harrison being killed off, Short's alternate ending would've brought his character full circle.

“I would have liked Harrison to eventually have been with Katie, how we started,” he said, referencing Lowes’ character, Quinn. “That would have been amazing. “

"Well remember the end of the pilot?" Lowes pointed out. "There was suppose to be something."

In the Scandal premiere, Harrison is the so-called “gladiator in a suit” who recruits Quinn to work at Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) crisis management firm in the first place. The opening scene sees the duo on a blind date that quickly turns into a job offer, once Harrison draws her in with the prestige of Olivia Pope & associates. At the end of the episode, they share a brief heart-to-heart about the reality of working under their enigmatic boss.

While some fans thought sparks flew between the couple in the pilot, Quinn and Harrison ultimately fell into different relationships.

“Adnan Salif came in,” Short pointed out, referencing the Nazanin Boniadi character that Harrison was involved with by the third season. As for Quinn, she got her happy ending in the finale, marrying Charlie (George Newbern) and living happily ever after with Diaz's Huck by their side.

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The conversation then saw Short turn to Diaz, joking that he was "mad”"when he was the last to get a steamy romantic subplot.

"How you get a sex scene before me?” he wondered aloud. "How Darby [Stanchfield] get a sex scene? All of y'all was having sex! Y’all was having sex, I wasn't having sex till season three, in the office. That’s crazy. They waited ‘cause I didn’t have no abs.”

He joked that three seasons in, his abs earned Harrison his tryst with Adnan, “They was like, ‘It’s time.’ Shonda was like, ‘Now take your shirt off.’ My abs wasn’t ready.”

Short exited the Shonda Rhimes-helmed political thriller in April 2014, following his March arrest for an altercation at a West L.A. restaurant. That same year, his then-wife Tuere Tanee Short filed for divorce and was granted a temporary restraining order after alleging the actor drunkenly threatened to kill her.

The actor's final scene in the series saw Harrison being held at gunpoint in the season 3 finale. The cliffhanger was resolved in the following episode, with Olivia learning of his death from a newspaper clipping.

You can listen to Short discuss his time on Scandal in the Thursday episode of Unpacking The Toolbox.