(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Fans of And Just Like That finally have something to celebrate this week: Aidan and Carrie are no more.
In Episode 9, “Present Tense,” the writers freed audiences from the reign of terror Aidan cast over the show. Vitriol from fans has been relentless. Thinkpieces have called Aidan “evil” and “the absolute worst,” and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Executive Producers Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky, who wrote this week’s episode, have been stunned by the fury towards Aidan. “As writers, we can’t predict where the outrage will land. It feels like a roulette wheel. I knew so many people loved Aidan that I really didn’t see the reaction coming this season,” Rottenberg told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed.
“I am completely shocked,” added Zuritsky. “As writers, we love all of the characters. It’s such a delicate line to walk, because we never want to assassinate them. At the same time, we don’t want to protect them from themselves—they have to react authentically.”
Rottenberg and Zuritsky have been writing for Aidan for a long time, since the original run of Sex and the City. They even wrote the pivotal first breakup between Aidan and Carrie in Season 4, “Change of a Dress.” “We also broke up Harry and Charlotte after she converted. My husband joked that we’re the executioners,” Rottenberg said.
Just like this season’s break-up, the SATC one was also planned before the filming even began—with full support from the whole writers’ room on both occasions. “We knew they were going to break up, and we wanted it to be around this issue of trust that has haunted them since Carrie’s original sin,” said Zuritsky, referring to the time Carrie cheated with Mr. Big during her relationship with Aidan.
With that decided, the writers then had to figure out how the breakup would manifest.
“At a certain point, it came up that Julie was in this very happy long-term relationship, but felt ambivalence towards marriage. [Showrunner] Michael [Patrick King] was fascinated by that,” Zuritsky said. The writers spent time unpacking that idea, and it felt like a fitting trait for Carrie. “It grew into Carrie’s panic attack around the wedding dress. She really loved Aidan. It wasn’t a question of her love, but the making it official, which grew organically out of Julie’s ambivalence.”
“We’re happily married with children now,” Rottenberg said. “But at the time, we talked about getting married or having kids, I burst into tears, and Michael wanted to understand that. We put a lot of our pain into these episodes. That was a big part of building and understanding her ambivalence.”
Rottenberg and Zuritsky were also excited to show a different side of proposals on television. “I’d only seen people get proposed to, and they always respond with a euphoric ‘Yes!,” Rottenberg said. “Or you’d see women giving ultimatums to men trying to get married,” Zuritsky added. But Carrie and Aidan’s original break-up came from a very real place, and the desire to show that not every woman is feverishly waiting to get hitched.
When it came to breaking the couple up again on AJLT, Rottenberg and Zuritsky were worried that fans would be disappointed that the relationship didn’t work out again, all these years later. Still, it felt like the right time for them to go their separate ways.
“When you think about exactly how much history they have, especially reliving that breakup, it’s a lot of baggage to haul around. This is a couple who have loved each other very genuinely, but are approaching life and each other from totally different perspectives,” said Zuritsky.
Though Aidan has been villainized by the AJLT fans, the writers never intended that. “We really didn’t want either of them to be the villain. Of course, people will have feelings and believe maybe there’s a villain here. But we worked hard for it to not feel like that,” Rottenberg said. “We really tried to show that these two people gave it all they had.”
Despite frustrations over their partnership, Rottenberg and Zuritsky wanted audiences to see how hard Carrie and Aidan tried to make things work. “Hopefully, people saw each time they came to a stalemate, they were able to talk through it. We really tried to show that these two people gave it all they had—you can’t say they didn’t give it a fighting chance. But who knows? The internet will let us know if we’re deluding ourselves,” Rottenberg said.
The writers spent a lot of time ensuring Carrie grew this season.
“Viewers were able to see a different Carrie in this chapter. She sucks it up a lot. If you look back on SATC, when she went out to the country, we made a big joke of what a fish out of water she’d be,” said Zuritsky. “This time, we made a conscious effort for her to be the opposite of that. In Virginia, she went to be game—even literally being a gamer with Wyatt. She was as appropriate, agreeable, and flexible as she could be,” Zuritsky says.
Viewers have been eagerly waiting all season for them to break up. But choosing to end a relationship with so much history isn’t something that either character would do on a whim. Plus, pursuing a whole new relationship is no small feat.
“Starting from scratch with a stranger, finding them, getting to know them, going through all the stages of a relationship with a new person is a tall order for anyone, let alone a woman in her fifties, even if she’s as fabulous as Carrie Bradshaw,” says Zuritsky. “With adulthood comes an awareness that nothing’s perfect. Even friendships take work, flexibility, communication, acceptance, and compromise. I think Carrie was being her most adult self, trying to stand by the person she loved, who was going through a really hard time with his family, with a lot of humility. I give her a lot of credit for being as patient and understanding as she was.”
“At this age, it’s very hard to find someone you love, and Exhibit A on how hellish dating is is the entire SATC series. It’s really hard to find someone to love,” said Rottenberg.
“Or even like!” Zuritsky added.
Carrie invested so much into her relationship with Aidan that ending things was no minor convenience. “It’s the emotional equivalent of the sunken cost theory. I think she was in too deep. I think she really wanted to make it work,” Rottenberg said.
Carrie’s past also played a key role in taking her time to end things. “Carrie was the one who cheated in the past. I think when you have that kind of history, you’re going to stay longer than you should, out of obligation, out of pride, out of decency. She had to be 110 percent in,” says Zuritsky.
Though fans will be breathing a sigh of relief that Carrie and Aidan are no more, they’ve broken up before and eventually got back together. Is this truly the end of their relationship?
“For all intents and purposes, yes,” Zuritsky said. “Put it this way: We’re not asking viewers to wait five years for them to be back together again.”
