A week ago, Michael Patrick King announced that And Just Like That’s Season 3 would be the last, that they were adding two finale episodes to the season and that would be that. While my timeline was always full of people talking about AJLT, the actual ratings for the show sucked, and this was a series revival which no one asked for or wanted. As I said, as a longtime Sex and the City watcher/fan, I actually tried to give AJLT a shot. I watched all of Season 1 and it was horrible, unfunny and they fundamentally changed the Miranda character to a crazy degree. I never thought Kim Cattrall’s Samantha was the linchpin of SATC, but as it turns out, Sam/Kim made everything click into place, and without her, AJLT was just a hollowed-out shell. Well, are you interested in more gossip about why AJLT is shuffling off? Enjoy:
The horse was finally put out of its misery, but shed no tears for the cancellation of “And Just Like That” — instead, Warner Bros. shareholders may want to ask why it hobbled along at such great expense for so long. The real reason HBO’s flailing show was canceled wasn’t because it went “woke” and political issues forced the show off the air … but because no one was watching. My insiders say it’s more shocking that it got renewed at all.
The first season of the “Sex and the City” spin-off got a meager 1.1 million viewers… and the following seasons were even worse. Season two debuted at 463,000, and this latest effort had just 429,000.
“It’s a horrifically expensive show to make and it wasn’t justified,” my insider said. “But HBO signed a multiyear contract with (executive producer) Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker so… there you go.”
Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon all made $10 million per season, and the rest of production likely tripled the $30 million the stars were making — so the show would have been at least a whopping $90 million to make … numbers that aren’t justifiable in this environment and with the low viewership. Hilariously, King released a statement late last week, making it sound as if he and Parker were the ones who decided to let the beleaguered show die.
However, the show is nowhere near as successful as HBO’s “The White Lotus” (11.6 million viewers), “The Penguin” (7.6 million viewers) or even the first season of “Sex and the City” (2.5 million), which eventually brought in over 10 million viewers.
”And Just Like That” was plagued with plodding and woke storylines and the loss of Kim Cattrall, who played Samantha, and refused to be a part of the show. Cattrall felt bullied and demeaned by Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis during “Sex and the City”, and while she did film one scene for the second season of “AJLT”, she refused to be on set or see with any of her former co-stars, demanded a seven figure check (she got it) and made sure her old friend and former “SATC” stylist Patricia Fields handled her clothing choices.
“Her cameo was the only interesting thing about the second season,” my insider sniped.
The big question now is what will Sarah Jessica do? She hasn’t had any real success since ‘Sex’. According to IMDB, Parker has one movie in the works: “Hocus Pocus 3”
For what it’s worth, SJP has other options, and she’s always worked in theater throughout her career. It’s not like she’s only ever done Carrie Bradshaw, it’s just that Carrie was her most famous and most lucrative character, and SJP wanted to milk this franchise for all its worth, to the very bitter end. This piece answered some questions for me though – I didn’t realize that HBO signed a multiyear contract with Michael Patrick King. HBO probably hoped that King would be able to recapture just a fraction of SATC’s old charm with this series. Instead, it was a bait-and-switch. As soon as AJLT was greenlit, King and SJP made the most dour, depressing, awful, legacy-destroying series they could do.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
