Inside the And Just Like That…Premiere
And just like that, eleven years after audiences last saw Carrie Bradshaw, the long-awaited Sex and the City revival has finally arrived. Last night, it looked like all of New York had gathered at the Museum of Modern Art for a fittingly glamorous premiere that even Anthony Marantino would approve of. Wearing an Oscar de la Renta evening dress with a tulle skirt—a nod to the original series’ iconic opening credits—Sarah Jessica Parker looked every bit the part of her onscreen alter ego.
“Carrie Bradshaw has a fevered relationship with fashion: she wants to try it all and she will, but it’s not unrelated to her inner life,” Sarah Jessica Parker told Vogue. “The costume designers Molly [Rogers] and Danny [Santiago] spent months considering the fashion in relation to the story but also the economy and how she travels the streets of New York. Carrie’s style is a sartorial reaction to whatever life throws at her.”
While Kim Cattrall opted not to return as Samantha Jones, And Just Like That… reunites Carrie with various lovers, friends, and foes from the franchise’s two-decade-plus history. With Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis returning as Miranda Hobbes and Charlotte York, the series follows the women in their mid-50s as they navigate all of the highs and lows that come with life, marriage, children. In line with Sex and the City’s rotating door of guest stars, And Just Like That… also features a slate of new characters.
“I came to New York in the early ’90s to study acting, and the show made me just fall in love with this city,” says Sara Ramirez. Showrunner Michael Patrick King offered the former Grey’s Anatomy star the role of a comedian who hosts a podcast with Carrie about—what else?—sex. “I found the original series to be so empowering in terms of teaching me how to express my sexuality, so I was excited to join this revival as a queer and non-binary character who speaks their truth.”
While the original Sex and the City was way ahead of its time in many regards, its whitewashed depiction of the most diverse city in the world hasn’t aged quite as well. “I watched the show and loved all of the characters, but I would’ve loved to see a version of myself on it,” says Karen Pittman, who plays Dr. Nya Wallace in the revival. “When the producers brought me this opportunity to play a woman who was just as ambitious, smart, and sexy as the others, I was all in.”
It was imperative to Parker, King, and the entire creative team for And Just Like That… to look more like the world we live in, and not just in front of the camera. While most of Sex and the City was written by King or series creator Darren Star, women comprise the majority of the revival’s writing staff.
“It was important to me to see a bunch of older women getting boned,” writer Samantha Irby bluntly told Vogue. “We don’t see enough women in their 50s and 60s getting laid and being sexy!”
After screening the first two episodes, premiere guests were shuttled to the former flagship location of Barney’s New York on Madison Avenue. I’m assuming the pitch for the after-party was “Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but make it camp” based on the amount of edible Manolo’s and chocolate lipstick tubes on display. The former department store was gutted and refurbished in wall-to-floor pink, with mannequins wearing iconic Sex and the City fashions modeled throughout the space. Nixon and Davis made the rounds while Parker mingled with friends and colleagues—or in the case of former Sex and the City guest stars Andy Cohen and Amy Sedaris, both.
And just in case you were wondering, Parker’s drink of choice that evening: a Cosmopolitan.
Photo: Starpix/HBO Max1/15Cynthia Nixon
Photo: Starpix/HBO Max2/15Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, and James Wilkie Broderick
