And Just Like That…, MAX’s sequel to the era-defining dramedy Sex & The City, has only released the three episodes of its second season, but you’d never know it from the media blitz we’ve been getting from its cast. The week closed with Andy Cohen getting not one but two separate scoops on the Sex-iverse: Cynthia Nixon revealed a gross-out scene from yesteryear we never saw; and Sarah Jessica Parker shared concerns about the season’s most-buzzed-about cameo.
Nixon joined Cohen on his Bravo talk show Watch What Happens Live earlier this week to chat about her role as Miranda, which she originated with Sex & The City’s premiere more than 25 years ago. When Cohen asked about storylines cut in the show’s initial run, Nixon recalled “What Goes Around Comes Around,” back in Season 3. Miranda is so nervous about going out with the intimidatingly hot Detective Stevens (Timothy Gibbs) that she drinks too much on their date…but what we didn’t see was the payoff to that scene, in which Miranda throws up on him. Perhaps one of the And Just Like That… writers remembered it, and that’s how we got the Season 1 episode in which Carrie gets too drunk with another bereaved singleton, Jon Tenney’s Peter, and they both puke in the street.
The next day, Parker visited Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show Andy Cohen Live, when — inevitably — the subject of Kim Cattrall’s return to And Just Like That… came up. In case you spent 2021 in a coma (if so: welcome back!), Kim Cattrall did not appear in the show’s first season, though her character, Samantha, was represented in the form of several text messages, and the gift of a floral arrangement for the funeral of Big (Chris Noth), late husband to Parker’s Carrie. Reportedly, the reason for Cattrall’s abstention was a feud between her and Parker, but after a personal appeal from HBO and Max content chairman Casey Bloys, and a request that original series costume designer Patricia Field dress her, Cattrall agreed to reprise her role. (The fact that she shot it entirely separate from any other cast member was not among Cattrall’s reported conditions, but it probably didn’t hurt!)
On Cohen’s show, Parker stated that she “couldn’t have been more upset” that the news of the cameo leaked so long before it would air. “It’s a big bummer because it would’ve been so like fireworks in the middle….It’s a little exchange that is happy and it says everything about their relationship and all the stuff that’s off-camera. They’re talking. They talk all the time, and it comes at a significant moment of the series.”
As someone who watched the entire first season of And Just Like That… hoping it might end with a surprise shot of Samantha happy and thriving on the streets of London (where, we’re informed in the AJLT series premiere, she has relocated), I can’t really disagree with Parker! It’s probably a drag for the cast members who did show up to know a certain segment of the viewership is just going to watch for the Cattrall cameo and then peace out forever, not least because Cattrall has said she is now absolutely, positively done with the franchise. But beyond that, it really would have been so much more fun for us all to have been surprised. Maybe the internet was a mistake.
