Love it or hate it, you probably watched And Just Like That all the way to the end to see what happened to Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and the rest of the ladies on the Sex and the City sequel series.
And even before we knew this would be the final season, everyone seemed to have something to say about how season 3 unfolded, from Lisa Todd Wexley’s (Nicole Ari Parker) dad dying twice to Carrie’s sensible hat for park-strolling and gelato.
Series creator Michael Patrick King is addressing the chatter and whether he pays attention to any of it, including what he calls “the press piñata.”
“There’s two things happening. There’s And Just Like That, the press piñata. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! It’s like a party game. It’s fun. And then there’s the unwritten love from the people that have been with Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte for 27 years, and their concerns about happy endings and storytelling,” King tells Entertainment Weekly. “They’re the people that are sort of blown away when Carrie goes to meet Duncan [Jonathan Cake] and walks along the fountain, and sees their Carrie Bradshaw. No one’s writing about that, but people are feeling all that.”
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The reason for the show, he points out, are those kinds of viewers, the ones who come to check in with their fictional friends every week. “There’s a whole other experience besides the tip of the iceberg, which is the clap back and the fun and the, ‘What’s that hat about?‘” the showrunner continues. “There’s the, ‘What’s that hat about?’ And what we’re more interested in is, ‘What’s that heart about?’ And that’s the show. It’s both things.”
He posits a difference in audience reaction to And Just Like That between the generations. The 50-somethings, he says, will cheer Carrie on for having a martini with Seema (Sarita Choudhury). “You’re not even drinking cosmos anymore. You’ve grown!” King jests.
“Then there’s the 20-year-olds watching Sex and the City on Netflix who say both Carrie and Aidan [John Corbett] are bad. They have a whole new perspective,” he says. “‘Why is Carrie flawed?’ Like, people aren’t allowed to be flawed now? But she’s flawed and she’s heroic at the same time, and that’s exciting. But it really is…I don’t know. Can you be zen and agitated? Can you be zen-itated? That’s what I am.”
Ultimately, King acknowledges the whole reason why we’re here, even doing this interview, is the entire spectrum of the audience. The series finale episode, which dropped on HBO Max Thursday, is “highly focused on the needs of the audience,” he says.
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“And by that I mean what people want from Carrie Bradshaw and the others,” he continues. “Within the finale, I was very aware of handling everyone…. The audience is always present for me in the writing. How do we service all the hopes and needs of the people watching through these five female characters, as well as Anthony?”
(Spoiler warning.)
The series finale saw Carrie return to her single life after her latest relationship attempt with Aidan didn’t work out, Miranda breaking Thanksgiving bread with the mother of her unborn grandchild, Charlotte and Harry (Evan Handler) finally having sex again, Lisa mentally recommitting to her marriage, Seema being content with a gluten-free pie at her own Thanksgiving with Adam (Logan Marshall-Green), and Anthony cementing his life with Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi).
Read more about how King and the writers crafted the grand finale as a callback to the original ending of Sex and the City.
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