Sarah Jessica Parker Explains Carrie’s Ending in the <i>And Just Like That...</i> Series Finale

THE RUNDOWN:

• And Just Like That... has officially come to an end after three seasons.
• In recent interviews, Sarah Jessica Parker opened up about the series finale and the choice to stop Carrie’s story here.
• “I feel really good about the principle by which we’re making this decision,” she said.

Sarah Jessica Parker is opening up about the series finale of And Just Like That... and the decision to end the series after three seasons.

“I feel really good about the principle by which we’re making this decision,” Parker told Vanity Fair. “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 [Patrick King, the showrunner] in a room, sitting across from me. But also it feels right and good.”

In the same interview, King elaborated on their decision to stop the show now and compared it to when they ended Sex and the City back in 2004. “I’m always aware of where we started, and I’m always aware of where we’re finishing,” he said. “When we ended Sex and the City, we had a conversation. I said, ‘I think this is where we are,’ and [SJP] agreed. And we walked away.” For this go-around, it was more of the same. “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.”

The series finale, which aired on August 14, left some fans feeling underwhelmed. Most glaringly, there’s no final scene of Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte all together. Instead, the series closes with the friends tending to their own families and Carrie dancing to Barry White alone in her apartment. But Parker stands by the decision to end in that way.

“Maybe the difference this time around is that there’s a confidence in not having to paint a portrait of a threesome, because the friendships are so rich,” she said. “It’s threaded. If you’re a knitter, it’s an incredibly tight stitch. So I don’t think we had to do that this time, because there’s decades of profound intimacy and friendship among these women.”

She continued, “The first time we ended the show, Carrie had been away. But there was an assurance for all of us and the audience that we were good, and they were strong, and there was real muscle behind the connection. I think it’s said over and over again in every episode. They’re there. They’re keeping secrets. They’re protecting secrets... They can share spaces. They can not share spaces—and I’m not talking about the metaphorical space that we’ve all been talking about for the last year. I’m not talking about holding space. I’m talking about literal space.”

She also mentioned new additions to the friend group, Seema and LTW. “They are now part of this as well,” she said. “There’s a real kind of assuredness about, ‘They know.’ The audience understands, and we don’t have to reassure them. Everybody’s well. Everybody’s good. Everybody is solid. Everybody ends together.”

And as for Carrie closing the series alone, Parker thinks her ending “honors the audience” and “doesn’t just exploit them in some way.”

In another interview with the New York Times, Parker was asked about why she thinks the show has been described as a “hate watch” since it first premiered in 2021.

“I don’t think I have the constitution to have spent a lot of time thinking about that,” she replied. “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 when asked where Carrie would be in the next 15 years, Parker said, “I think [her life] would be pretty rich, in terms of friendships and culture and travel and the ways in which the children of her friends are in her life. I feel good about her. I think she’s set up pretty well.”