Are you an Aidan person or a Big person?” Michael Patrick King asks, shortly after his face appears via Zoom from New York. When his Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That returns for its second season June 22, the showrunner is hopeful that this now decades-old debate will be had anew. After all, when the show’s second season trailer dropped earlier this month, it revealed that Aidan would be returning to the show, and to Carrie Bradshaw’s life. Instantly, it became one of two major plot points that has monopolized the media dialogue surrounding the show. The other: the return of Kim Cattrall‘s Samantha, who reportedly filmed her single-page scene in secret — without King or her former costars — earlier this year.
In mid-June, King spoke candidly about the return of both, along with his concerted effort to add dimension and humanity to the other characters in his now expansive cast. Let’s start with Aidan (played by John Corbett). At what point did you decide you wanted him to return?
“The minute I knew we were doing a season two. Before I even started writing, there was only one word in my mind for the season: Aidan. I didn’t know how, what, where, when; I hadn’t even vetted it with anybody. The first person I went to was Sarah Jessica, and then the studio and then the writers. It felt like it would create excitement, which is great as a showrunner. And as a writer, it creates a very complicated past that we’re bringing into the present.”
How focused or concerned were you with keeping his return a secret?
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“I mean, you keep your fingers crossed. I still think it’s a miracle that we got away with a surprising Big [Chris Noth] death. As you can see, there were two leaks this season: Aidan and Samantha [Kim Cattrall]. But we knew Sarah Jessica and John Corbett were going to be seen on the street together filming, so we sort of said, “Well, it’s there in the world.” Or, it’s there in the world when it has to be. And then sometimes it’s before it has to be, which is what happened with the Samantha leak. You can imagine my desire to have someone watching the show and see Carrie (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) hold her phone and look down and see, “Samantha,” out of nowhere. That would’ve been thrilling, but at least they know Samantha’s in the show.”
What did you learn from season one that you brought with you to season two?
“You knew all of the original characters for so long, so the most we could do with the new characters in the first season was to introduce them, really. You had judged everybody by the cover of their book last year because everybody only got the cover of who they were. When we knew we were coming back, we wanted to show who these people really are from Che [Sara Ramirez] to LTW [Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker] to Seema [Sarita Choudhury] and Nya [Karen Pittman]. And then our mandate of why we came back to do And Just Like That at all with new people was to invite more points of view and more people to the table of this feast. And then the other thing was to try to connect them all because the first season they were on individual runways. It was Carrie and Seema, Nya and Miranda [Cynthia Nixon], and Charlotte and LTW. So, in room was almost like when you see those shows about a serial killer where the FBI have all the red yarn going [from one suspect to another]. But for us, it was, like, Carrie to Che to Miranda. That was our goal; to make it become more integrated.”
I’ve heard you and some of your writers say that you were surprised and, at the same time, not surprised by the backlash to Che. I’m hoping you can elaborate on that.
“When we wrote the fingering scene in the kitchen season one, when Carrie was in bed and she ended up peeing into a Snapple bottle [because Miranda was too busy being fingered by Che to help her friend to the bathroom], we were like, “This is the departing moment.” This now goes both further sexually than anybody was expecting, and I think that scene scared the audience. Like, “I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen this combo plate, and I don’t know what they’re going to do next.” That was episode five, and I think everybody locked into some sort of tension mode for the whole rest of the season, thinking, like, “I don’t know what’s coming.” Like, if they’re going to kill Big, finger Miranda and then break Miranda apart, I don’t know what to expect. And I’ll take a rollercoaster over, “I saw it coming” or “I’m bored by it.”
Sure, Steve [David Eigenberg] is also a beloved character, and suddenly you have Che being blamed for breaking up Miranda’s marriage to him.
“Yes, and we knew that the idea of anyone splitting a marriage apart would be the story viewers told themselves about what happened rather than Miranda liberating herself in front of Che. And we knew it was gonna be bad, but it was happening even before Che. When you’re telling most every couple, me included, that sitting on the couch watching television and eating desserts is not healthy, you’ve basically created a problem. And I love sitting on the couch with [my partner] eating desserts, but if you don’t love it, you’re being called out. And so I knew it was going to be problematic. It’s always problematic to point at anything that society says is normal, meaning a couple — because once you’re married, you stay married, and anytime you pull that apart, it’s going to create friction. And when it’s with a character like Che that no one’s really seen before, which is a confident sexual, standup comic, who’s in a nonbinary selfhood, it’s a lot for people.”
How did that response inform how you approached the character this season?
“I was so thrilled to have a chance to come back and make them more dimensional and human. It’s like we do with all our characters: Oh, you think you know Carrie, well, look she’s having an affair with Mr. Big and he’s married, okay, now, do you still love her? So, you get to turn characters around and, again, make them more dimensional. The reaction to Che in the multiverse that is Sex and the City and And Just Like That was a chance for us to really show what else is in a human being besides the label that you’ve put on them, or, even more advanced than that, that they’ve put on them that they’re constantly evaluating. So, yeah, I love the chance to show the vulnerability. And also, with Sara Ramirez, I knew it would be deeply felt, whatever it is. You can still have your feelings, and you can still say, “Oh, no, no, I’m not going to change my opinion of someone now because of the writing,” but we tried to show more dimension.”
Do you have those conversations with Sara, preparing them for how this might land?
“I have conversations that are important with all the actors. I would say, first, with the executive producer original three [Parker, Nixon and Davis], we always talk about their arcs. And with Sara, too, and Sara has also been informing me of this journey, because we want it to be true to their experience. And I also want to be able to push where we can. So, I always check in, But when we started, Sara and I talked about it and I said, “Sara, I think what we need to do is deconstruct.” And they were like, “Yesssss.” It’s like, bring the scaffolding down and showing what’s underneath.”
With LTW’s storyline, the second season really explores what it means to be Black in the upper crust of New York. Talk to me about what inspired that storyline and how you worked with the writers, and possibly even [the actress] Nicole Ari Parker herself, to hash out what the show wanted to say about the racial and gender dynamics?
“We’ve deliberately had a very…”
