And Just Like That fans have a lot of…let’s say, passionate feelings, about the show. No one knows that more than Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky, who executive produce and write the show that’s become the weekly lightning rod at the proverbial watercooler.
Fan backlash to AJLT is particularly pervasive in its third season, reaching a fever pitch over Episode 6, when one character’s funeral was a key plotline—despite that person already dying two seasons prior.
While they didn’t directly comment on that particular continuity error, angry fans are something Rottenberg and Zuritsky, who first met when they were 9 and wrote on the original Sex and the City, are used to. “I remember very clearly writing on Sex and the City. We didn’t have social media, but there was a lot of backlash to pretty much everything we did on the show back then,” Zuritsky said over Zoom.
Fans of the Sex and the City spinoff can take a deep breath and put their keyboards away this week: Episode 8 of AJLT is a delight. Written by Rottenberg and Zuritsky, this week’s episode, titled “Happily Ever After,” is a romp that feels like classic SATC—and it just so happens to be the horniest episode of the season. Sex is back on the show in a big way.
Just about everyone is going at it in “Happily Ever After”—or they’re wanting to. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Aidan (John Corbett) are getting it on all day. Seema (Sarita Choudhury) is having some of the best sex of her life with Carrie’s gardner, Adam (Logan Marshall Green). Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) is trying to get it on with her husband while having erotic dreams about her co-worker.
“We like to show that married people still have sex,” Zuritsky said. “We love and relate to the idea that you can have a healthy marriage and sex life, and still unconsciously or consciously be attracted to someone new.” Lisa’s storyline felt like the best place to explore that.
“This season, we haven’t had that much sex,” said Rottenberg. The writers want to balance the tragic and light, and the pain with sexiness, throughout the season. Episode 8 felt like the natural time to amp things up. “Especially for Seema and Adam, we felt like they’re the kind of people who would have a great sex life, and we’ve been building to that,” Rottenberg added.
No one is having a better time in bed than Seema. Her relationship with Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) is heating up, and the pair have the amazing sex that the writers were leading to. There’s an undeniable joy and happiness when these two are together—something that’s been missing in her previous attempts at love.
Seema exudes a certain Hollywood glamour, and that’s something she’s previously craved in her potential lovers. But Adam is a landscaper, the kind of person Seema normally wouldn’t bat an eye at. “We all felt like, goddamn it, this woman needs to be knocked off her feet by the opposite of what she thinks she needs. We were super excited to see Seema laughing with someone, and in a romantic relationship that felt playful and brought out a more innocent, childlike side of her,” Zuritsky said.
After Seema orgasms, she’s overtaken by a fit of laughter. It surprises her: “I’ve never laughed after sex,” she says.
“The orgasm scene felt so real and different,” said Rottenberg. It’s a sweet and tender moment for Seema, a character who typically puts up walls and isn’t vulnerable. But with Adam, she can let her walls down. “It’s still fun and sexy, even if you’re giggling,” Rottenberg said.
The other big highlight of “Happily Ever After” comes during Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) art gallery opening. It’s an exhibit that encourages visitors to consider what happiness truly looks like. There are various installations, from a woman lying alone in bed on her iPad to a much racier one, where a woman lies naked in a bed covered in used condoms, inspired by the work of Tracey Emin.
“The idea of the exhibit itself was a Michael Patrick King special,” Zuritsky said. But a key moment was entirely of their own brainstorming.
Charlotte is rather repulsed by the condom-filled piece (are you surprised?). But she notes to her younger colleagues that the work is from the ’80s, a “time pre-Lena Dunham when women were not celebrated for being this messy.” (Easily the funniest line of the episode.)
During the opening night, everything is going smoothly. That is, until Charlotte has a sudden onset of vertigo. She tries to find something to lean against for balance, but ends up falling right onto the bed, next to the naked woman.
Like Charlotte’s sudden vertigo, many of the details in And Just Like That are drawn from Rottenberg and Zuritsky’s own life experiences. “The vertigo was an idea we were kicking around because so many of us have older women in our lives who have bouts of vertigo. We were talking about how to use it, and then magically this came along. It felt inevitable that she would fall into the exhibit after being disgusted by it,” Zuritsky said.
One other outrageous detail in this episode came right from a shared experience the writers had.
“Julie and I went out with our friends to a really cute bar in Park Slope. We saw this lovely-looking, well-dressed woman just pull out deodorant and start applying it at the table,” said Zuritsky. “We just howled with laughter. The next day, we were like, ‘We have to make this happen on the show.”
And that’s exactly what they did. When Seema and Adam are at dinner, they’re bewildered to see a beautiful woman suddenly applying deodorant. It’s a moment that seems stranger than fiction, and that’s because it is.
With Sex and the City, Rottenberg and Zuritsky pulled a lot from secondhand sources, but in And Just Like That, they have a more personal approach.
“We were all learning from what it was like to be a friend of someone who had a baby, for example,” said Zuritsky. “Once Julie and I experienced motherhood and pregnancy ourselves, we were struck by how much more we wish we could have put into the show. Being the age of the characters now, it feels more immediate or organic; there’s more first-hand material we can actually draw from.”
Despite this being a joyous step forward for And Just Like That, the continued uproar from fans is all but inevitable. But Rottenberg and Zuritsky aren’t nearly as concerned about it as you might think.
“The first season, I was totally invested in the response. And I was deeply sad and hurt. Now, I’m at the place where I’m more interested, but not completely submerged,” Zuritsky said.
“Elisa and I have written so many things that never saw the light of day, or were on air, and nobody watched,” Rottenberg added. “It can be upsetting, because we feel like we know these characters intimately, and we work hard to write the best stories we can. That said, it’s truly the greatest compliment you can get, even if people are up in arms and coming with pitchforks, because it means they care, and they’re invested.”
It’s the lived experiences of the writers that wind up making the show so unique and passionately debated.
“The most shocking thing for me is when a story that’s so personal receives such extreme reactions. I feel like everyone was just in my therapy session, writing a review of my life,” Rottenberg said. “We get to take all of the painful, hilarious, and shocking things that happen to us on any given day and put them in the lives of all our characters.”
“These things keep happening at our age,” Zuristky said. “It’s still very embarrassing to be alive.”
