Twenty-seven years ago, a tutu-clad Sarah Jessica Parker first spied herself on the side of a bus in the opening credits of Sex and the City. That boundary-breaking comedy series boldly followed Parker’s Carrie and her best friends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall)—four independent women reckoning with life and love as single, 30-something New Yorkers. Six seasons, seven Emmys, two feature films, and a revival series later, Carrie’s arc comes to an end with the series finale of And Just Like That…, the revival series that launched in December of 2021 and concludes Thursday on HBO Max.
“How does it feel?” says a wistful Parker over Zoom, two days before the series finale. “I can’t really tell you, because I don’t yet know.” She does remember how it felt to wrap the second Sex and the City movie, before there was even an inkling of a revival series. “You’re walking away from hundreds of people who you love, who you admire, who you respect, who have been the biggest part of the success of something,” she says of the franchise’s cast and crew. “I will feel at sixes and sevens in that same way.”
And Just Like That… creator Michael Patrick King has been working alongside Parker since the beginning, first serving as writer, director, and eventual showrunner on Sex and the City. “I’m always aware of where we started, and I’m always aware of where we’re finishing,” he says from his own Zoom screen, pointing to Carrie’s tutu, which is mounted in a box on the wall behind him. “When we ended Sex and the City, we had a conversation,” says King. “I said, ‘I think this is where we are,’ and she agreed. And we walked away.” King says that the two shared a similar moment this season. “We both look at each other and go, ‘I think this is where we are,’” he says. “The thing that I get from Sarah Jessica is this complete willingness to stop when we want to, and not just keep going because we can.”
While she’s still processing saying goodbye to the role of her lifetime, Parker is confident in the choice to end the series. “I feel really good about the principle by which we’re making this decision,” she says. “It’s hard for a lot of people to understand if they see it doing really well. It’s an agonizing thing to say out loud, with Michael in a room, sitting across from me. But also it feels right and good.” Carrie’s ending, Parker feels, “honors the audience. It doesn’t just exploit them in some way.”
Unlike the two-part Sex and the City finale, which saw Carrie’s on-again, off-again fling Mr. Big (Chris Noth) cross the Atlantic to rescue her, no knight in shining armor arrives at the end of And Just Like That…. The series ends instead with Carrie—after a very chaotic Thanksgiving at Miranda’s new apartment—eating a piece of pie alone in her home, content and fulfilled.
“A lot of people want Carrie to be with somebody and live happily ever after, because that’s what society tells people happily ever after is,” says King. “What we tried to do in the very last moments is show how busy and noisy and filled with love Carrie’s life is. She comes home to this beautiful, quiet house that she’s created for herself—and leaves her shoes on.”
Like the best duos, King and Parker worked in tandem to figure out how to send Carrie off. “Susan Fales-Hill and I wrote the words, but Sarah Jessica wrote the music,” says King. Literally: Parker is the one who wanted “You’re My Everything” to play over the show’s final scene and end credits. “Sarah Jessica picking that song, and having Carrie say, ‘You’re my everything,’ as she’s looking in a mirror is a big writing moment,” says King.
In their only joint conversation about the finale, King and Parker wax poetic about nearly three decades of life with and as Carrie Bradshaw.
Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker on the set of And Just Like That…Craig Blankenhorn
