Sarah Jessica Parker hasn’t given the haters of her series And Just Like That much thought. The actress, who played Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City and its more recent sequel, reflected on the perception of the show in a new interview with The New York Times.
Responding to whether she was aware of how often And Just Like That was described by fans as a “hate watch,” Parker said, “I don’t think I have the constitution to have spent a lot of time thinking about that. We always worked incredibly hard to tell stories that were interesting or real. I guess I don’t really care. And the reason I don’t care is because it has been so enormously successful, and the connections it has made with audiences have been very meaningful.”
And Just Like That reunited the original cast of Sex and the City, minus Kim Cattrall, in 2021. It became HBO Max’s most-watched series debut upon release, however the viewership fell over the course of the three seasons. It came to an end last week after showrunner Michael Patrick King announced it would not return for a fourth year. Parker said she was confident in where the story concluded.
Asked “Why end the show now?,” she replied, “Because that’s where the story ended. We could have gone on doing coffee shops. There’s a million ways to do it that are easy and familiar and fun, but feel exploitative to us. We felt this was the honorable thing to do. It’s very easy to stay. It’s where we’re all happy. But you have to be principled when you make these very difficult, agonizing decisions because there’s a lot of people who are affected.”
Parker previously told People she doesn’t pay attention to the online discourse about the show. “I don’t have the constitution for that, because I think you’re going to perhaps read things or hear things that don’t always feel great,” she said. “When you’re part of a community, people are going to have a lot of feelings. And it doesn’t mean that a feeling can’t change, it’s a reaction. We want very much for people to have all those feelings, and it’s not for us to police or try to correct them. So I’m a very inexperienced troller or a sneaker around-er, because I think that conversation is better left not in any way witnessed or babysat by me.”
Rolling Stone wrote of the And Just Like That finale, “It was not an easy happily-ever-after. But it was still a triumph. After 27 years of watching Carrie Bradshaw go through relationship after relationship, ending up not alone, but on her own, it felt like a detente, an uneasy peace with the world of heteronormative relationships… Carrie gave us so much, but never perfection. And I thank her for that.”
