If you think Charlotte York (played by Kristin Davis) is on edge more than ever in HBO Max’s series And Just Like That, you may be right.
In episode 4, Charlotte and her pal Lisa Todd Wexley, a.k.a. LTW (Nicole Ari Parker), make arrangements for a dinner party, but the mom-of-two realizes that she doesn’t have a “diverse friendship circle.” She asks her neighbor, who is African American, to join Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and others, but she is busy that night and can’t make it.
As a result, she asks her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), to brush up on his knowledge of Black artists and authors. Upon entering the room, Charlotte looks around and realizes she and Harry are the only white people, which ends up being perfectly OK.
“In terms of her freaking out, I felt really nervous about the [scene with the] neighbor, and that [Charlotte] would seem like a fully insane human being,” Davis told Entertainment Weekly about the uncomfortable situation.
However, since the Couples Retreat alum, 56, adopted daughter Gemma in 2011 and son Wilson in 2018, she is no stranger to being in these types of situations, so it was easy for her to play.
“I’ve already had to deal with a lot of these issues because I have Black children. A lot of this is very, very familiar to me in terms of my friends and my family and different people around me, where maybe that was something that they had to deal with,” she explained. “I loved to hear [writer] Keli [Goff]‘s point of view, and I loved to hear Nicole’s point of view because we’re trying to make something that is relatable to all. I always trust [producer] Michael Patrick [King] in terms of knowing how Charlotte would or would not react, and he always modulates me if I’m in any way off.”
In fact, Davis is excited that the new series is talking about key issues since Sex and the City failed to do so.
“It’s something that’s very important to me. I felt that if we have this opportunity that we should take it, and we do. It’s been a joy, and our new writers and our new actors have just been mind-bogglingly brilliant and wonderful, and they have so many ideas,” she expressed. “We talked about which artists [should be featured] for months and months. Because you have to go through the artist and the agent [to get the rights], and it’s a process. We really wanted to be current and on point, but also we had to make sure that [the pieces] were available to us. So it was a whole thing. We stressed about it because we wanted to be good, and we wanted to be real. Charlotte really means well, as we know, but she’s not perfect by any means.”
HBO Max drops new episodes of And Just Like That every Thursday.
