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And Just Like That showrunner Michael Patrick King is defending Carrie Bradshaw’s “flawed” personality.
King, 70, spoke with Entertainment Weekly for a story published on Friday, August 15, the day after the HBO Max series ended for good. The finale polarized viewers who loved and loathed the third and last season of the Sex and the City spinoff.
“There’s two things happening,” he told the outlet. “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.”
He added, “They’re the people that are sort of blown away when Carrie [Sarah Jessica Parker] 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.”
King said he thinks there’s a generational divide between Carrie’s unconditional supporters and those who find her quirks grating.
In one camp, he theorized, there are 50-somethings who applaud Carrie for drinking a martini with friends like old times, and in the other, “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,” King said. “‘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.”
He added, “Can you be zen and agitated? Can you be zen-itated? That’s what I am.”
The finale on Thursday, August 14 concluded with Carrie gazing out the window of her luxe Manhattan home amid the realization that she was happy being single after her split from Aidan and fling with Duncan. In a voiceover, Carrie read a line from the epilogue of her novel that reflected her frame of mind: “The woman realized she was not alone — she was on her own.”
The SATC reboot premiered in 2021 and also brought back Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) for their next chapter. Two weeks before the characters’ big farewell, King and Parker, 60, confirmed that AJLT’s current season would be its swan song.
“When we were about to do press, I didn’t want to have a conversation,” King told EW of keeping the news quiet at the outset. “I didn’t want all the ladies and me to be saying, ‘Well, it’s over.’ I really didn’t want to have a conversation about why something was ending as we were beginning it. It just becomes the headline. It’s the only thing on the menu: the final season.”
He continued, “That works ’cause it gets eyes on it, but also it takes away a bit of an emotional commitment to something from the audience. They’re like, ‘Well, why am I getting involved? It’s over.’ I really wanted people to get involved, and they did.”
