Twenty-seven years ago, a tutu-clad Sarah Jessica Parker first spied herself on the side of a bus in the opening credits of Sex and the City. That boundary-breaking comedy series boldly followed Parker’s Carrie and her best friends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall)—four independent women reckoning with life and love as single, 30-something New Yorkers. Six seasons, seven Emmys, two feature films, and a revival series later, Carrie’s arc comes to an end with the series finale of And Just Like That…, the revival series that launched in December of 2021 and concludes Thursday on HBO Max.
“How does it feel?” says a wistful Parker over Zoom, two days before the series finale. “I can’t really tell you, because I don’t yet know.” She does remember how it felt to wrap the second Sex and the City movie, before there was even an inkling of a revival series. “You’re walking away from hundreds of people who you love, who you admire, who you respect, who have been the biggest part of the success of something,” she says of the franchise’s cast and crew. “I will feel at sixes and sevens in that same way.”
And Just Like That… creator Michael Patrick King has been working alongside Parker since the beginning, first serving as writer, director, and eventual showrunner on Sex and the City. “I’m always aware of where we started, and I’m always aware of where we’re finishing,” he says from his own Zoom screen, pointing to Carrie’s tutu, which is mounted in a box on the wall behind him. “When we ended Sex and the City, we had a conversation,” says King. “I said, ‘I think this is where we are,’ and she agreed. And we walked away.” King says that the two shared a similar moment this season. “We both look at each other and go, ‘I think this is where we are,’” he says. “The thing that I get from Sarah Jessica is this complete willingness to stop when we want to, and not just keep going because we can.”
While she’s still processing saying goodbye to the role of her lifetime, Parker is confident in the choice to end the series. “I feel really good about the principle by which we’re making this decision,” she says. “It’s hard for a lot of people to understand if they see it doing really well. It’s an agonizing thing to say out loud, with Michael in a room, sitting across from me. But also it feels right and good.” Carrie’s ending, Parker feels, “honors the audience. It doesn’t just exploit them in some way.”
Unlike the two-part Sex and the City finale, which saw Carrie’s on-again, off-again fling Mr. Big (Chris Noth) cross the Atlantic to rescue her, no knight in shining armor arrives at the end of And Just Like That…. The series ends instead with Carrie—after a very chaotic Thanksgiving at Miranda’s new apartment—eating a piece of pie alone in her home, content and fulfilled.
“A lot of people want Carrie to be with somebody and live happily ever after, because that’s what society tells people happily ever after is,” says King. “What we tried to do in the very last moments is show how busy and noisy and filled with love Carrie’s life is. She comes home to this beautiful, quiet house that she’s created for herself—and leaves her shoes on.”
Like the best duos, King and Parker worked in tandem to figure out how to send Carrie off. “Susan Fales-Hill and I wrote the words, but Sarah Jessica wrote the music,” says King. Literally: Parker is the one who wanted “You’re My Everything” to play over the show’s final scene and end credits. “Sarah Jessica picking that song, and having Carrie say, ‘You’re my everything,’ as she’s looking in a mirror is a big writing moment,” says King.
In their only joint conversation about the finale, King and Parker wax poetic about nearly three decades of life with and as Carrie Bradshaw.
Vanity Fair: When did you know this would be the final season of And Just Like That…?
Michael Patrick King: Every season of Sex and the City and And Just Like That…, you always go gangbusters. You never know if there’s going to be more…. Even when we started this season, I was very aware of where we wanted Carrie to be at the end. That last line, “She realized she wasn’t alone—she was on her own,” was so emotional when it appeared.
At one point, I said to Sarah Jessica, “I think this is Carrie right now. If we go any further, we don’t know what it is. So why get on base just to keep doing something?” I really thought leaving Carrie with that sentence did justice to everyone who has someone and everyone who doesn’t have someone. Which has sort of always been the hero of the series: the individual.
Sarah Jessica Parker: There’s a tiny little soliloquy when Carrie is walking down the street with Charlotte. I don’t recall the words exactly, but I recall the feeling. Michael was directing that episode. I was really struggling holding it together. I was with Kristin, and that’s always really sentimental. Michael’s like, “Maybe we should do one when you’re not sobbing.” [Laughs.] I felt like it was the crucible of Carrie.
In Sex and the City, Carrie winds up with Big, but on And Just Like That…, Carrie ends the series secure in her singledom. Do you see the And Just Like That… finale as course correction? How do you pair both of those two endings together?
King: I think they talk to each other. I think it’s about the evolution of a person realizing what growth is, or what aging is—like a wine. It becomes deeper and more sure of itself. They definitely speak to each other. What’s great about being alive is you’re in a moment, and you don’t know what’s coming next.
Parker: I think it’s such a good question about course correction—trying to appease or placate, and feel like we’re telling the story they want us to tell. It’s an impossible situation. There are those that wanted Carrie to be with Big; there are those that wanted her to feel confident without a partnership.
I think Carrie has stood strong; I think she’s been weak. It is the natural wave human beings ride. I’ve never felt that the decisions that were made this season were in any way a response—but every decision you make is based on information from your past. Whether you’re even aware of it, it all informs the next choice you make.
King: Carrie doesn’t have to speak for everyone. The season ended deliberately with so much love. Miranda and Joy—you understand something’s going to be good for Miranda there. Charlotte and Harry get back together by having sex…. It’s never been, “Here’s one way to be,” because that’s the opposite of Sex and the City. It’s always been, “There’s no one way to be a woman. There’s no one way to be in a relationship. No matter what society says, you can be an individual.”
If this is the end of Carrie Bradshaw as we know her, what do you think of her legacy? People online have been comparing her to Odysseus and Jesus.
Parker: I didn’t know that. [Laughs.] I’ve always felt ill-equipped to ponder a legacy, because I think it seems self-involved and kind of unsightly. Is there a legacy to even consider? What I like about the question is the way others talk about the show. Even academics, college courses, people who write columns about culture or television or women or sexual politics—I leave it to them, if they’re curious and interested. I don’t think it’s their job, nor do I think they should necessarily spend their time doing that. But I feel they have a sometimes-circumspect, sometimes-emotional, sometimes-objective and often very subjective point of view about the role we’ve played in culture. If you come to me a year from now and I have some distance, I might feel more articulate, but for the time being, I think I will leave that to others.
King: I’ll be one of the others. [Laughs.] I could talk about the legacy that we sewed into the finale. There are three moments of legacy, because people always want Carrie to be them. The first legacy is when she says to Adam the gardener, “Let’s go back to something wild with the garden. Something more me.” That’s there for all the people who like wild Carrie. She comically says, [about] Victor Garber’s character, “Oh, my new relationship is exhausting.” He’s in [there] to show that there will always be a man, and whether she chooses to investigate that, it’s there. And then the third legacy is someone who is content with the moment they’re in, which is Carrie at home walking away into a French mirror.
For a series finale, this doesn’t give all of the fan service that you would expect. We don’t get a scene of Miranda, Carrie, and Charlotte all together. We have a pretty major toilet issue. What was the thought process there?
King: If you’re showing a couple who’s comfortable cleaning up shit together, that pretty much says, “They’re going to be fine. They’re going to weather through.”
Parker: Maybe the difference this time around is that there’s a confidence in not having to paint a portrait of a threesome, because the friendships are so rich. It’s threaded. If you’re a knitter, it’s an incredibly tight stitch. So I don’t think we had to do that this time, because there’s decades of profound intimacy and friendship among these women.
The first time we ended the show, Carrie had been away. But there was an assurance for all of us and the audience that we were good, and they were strong, and there was real muscle behind the connection. I think it’s said over and over again in every episode. They’re there. They’re keeping secrets. They’re protecting secrets. They’re there in the middle of the night. They’re there in the middle of the day. They can cover for one another. They can step in. They can retreat. They can share spaces. They can not share spaces—and I’m not talking about the metaphorical space that we’ve all been talking about for the last year. I’m not talking about holding space. I’m talking about literal space.
I think all of that is illustrated all season, and that includes Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and LTW (Nicole Ari Parker). They are now part of this as well. There’s a real kind of assuredness about, “They know.” The audience understands, and we don’t have to reassure them. Everybody’s well. Everybody’s good. Everybody is solid. Everybody ends together.
When Miranda and Joy wind up at the vet, I definitely expected Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) to pop up as the person who saves Joy’s dog. Was that the same vet clinic, and if so, was there any potential of Che popping up?
King: This is not the same pet clinic. It’s a different pet clinic, but we did scream-laugh about it in the writing room and decided that it would be too upstage-y. [Laughs.] In my mind, Che no longer works in a pet clinic; they’re starring in a show on some streamer.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
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