And Just Like That…, Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and…text messages from Samantha are back. The Sex and the City revival series dropped its first two episodes on December 9 and ushered us into life over 50 for our favorite ladies who lunch. There are so many spoilers to be had in these first two installments, but no major tea will be spilled here—just a deep dive into the familiar Broadway faces populating the next generation of Carrie Bradshaw's social circle.
New York City-centric shows are always good for a Broadway cameo, but the Sex and the City/Show People Venn diagram has always been nearly a circle. The tradition blissfully continues with this not-even-exhaustive list of stage favorites.
Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw)- This is the shallowest of cuts in And Just Like That…, but you can't talk about theatre folk in the Sex and the City universe without mentioning the indelible SJP. From an OG Annie, to Princess Winnifred in the 1996 revival of Once Upon a Mattress, to A.R. Gurney's titular canine in Sylvia, Parker will always be ours—no matter how tied she is to the Carrie Bradshaw name. And if you need more proof of her fealty to the stage, don't forget that you'll be able to see her this spring in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite—one of the last holdouts from the interrupted 2020 Broadway season. She'll be sharing the Hudson Theatre with her husband (and former How to Succeed in Business… costar) Matthew Broderick, so it's a comedy, a family affair, and a Broadway event all in one.
Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbs)- Cynthia Nixon—whose role as the fiery red-headed lawyer Miranda Hobbs has mellowed to a clumsy silver-haired warrior for social justice—has only grown her presence in the theatre world since hitting it big with the HBO series. In the past 15 years, she's earned two Tony Awards (for Rabbit Hole in 2006 and for The Little Foxes in 2017, in which she nightly traded roles with Laura Linney), plus a third nomination for her transcendent 2012 performance in Wit. Nixon has also honed her craft as a director, helming three off-Broadway productions (Rasheeda Speaking, Steve, and MotherStruck! all in 2015) and planning her Broadway directorial debut with the Jane Chambers play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. That production was originally planned for the fall of 2020 (and did not go forward for obvious reasons), but while we wait for that project to come to fruition, you can enjoy Nixon's direction of And Just Like That…'s sixth episode, "Diwali," and be grateful that she wasn't too busy being the governor of New York to show us how Miranda's parenting style meets the challenge of an over-sexed teenage boy.
Julie Halston (Bitsy Von Muffling)- That's right, Bitsy Von Muffling is back—but sadly, only for the first two episodes. Halston, an honorary Tony Award recipient and nine-time Broadway veteran (Tootsie, You Can't Take It With You, Anything Goes), became a Sex and the City fan favorite as the semi-delusional socialite who married the (presumably gay?) lounge singer Bobby Fine, played by three-time Tony winner Nathan Lane. Spoiler alert: Bobby is no longer with us. But Bitsy is as delightfully Bitsy as ever—and she is bestowed with the honor of broaching the pivotal question: Where is Samantha?!
Mario Cantone (Anthony Marentino)- You'll be happy to hear that Sex and the City's bitchiest event planner is still by Charlotte's side in 2021, and continues to revel in his contentious marriage to Carrie's gay bestie, Stanford Blatch (iconically played by the late Willie Garson who passed during the filming of the series). Cantone has been performing on New York City stages since the mid-'90s, making his Broadway debut as Nathan Lane's replacement in the Terrence McNally play Love! Valour! Compassion! He also had the privilege of being directed by Cynthia Nixon in the New Group production of Steve in 2015. In conclusion, the SATC theatrical universe is a flat circle.
Chris Jackson (Herbert Wexley)- The man with the best dad vibes on Broadway is bringing all his cozy swagger to this reboot as investment banker Herbert Wexley—father of a thoroughly untalented piano student who has the misfortune of sharing a recital stage with Charlotte's prodigy of a daughter, Lily. We've yet to see if his plot line offers him a chance to show off the Tony-nominated pipes we became acquainted with in In the Heights and Hamilton, but he is slated to appear in nine out of the show's 10 episodes, so we can hold out hope 'til the bitter end. And so far, it's plenty satisfying to see him as the other half of the Wexley power couple, alpha'd by Charlotte's new girl crush Lisa Todd Wexley (played by Nicole Ari Parker, a Broadway alum herself who starred as Blanche Du Bois in the 2012 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire).
Karen Pittman (Dr. Nya Wallace)- Karen Pittman is another fresh face in the Sex and the City universe, but a familiar one to theatergoers. She's been in some of the most pivotal works of the last decade, including Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced and Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline. She now plays Dr. Nya Wallace—a Columbia professor in Miranda's Human Rights Masters program, and the woman with the unfortunate task of teaching a wealthy corporate lawyer the difference between wokeness and white guilt. And Just Like That…Miranda became a socialist.
Sara Ramirez (Che Diaz)- It's been 16 years since Sara Ramirez graced a Broadway stage, but their Tony-winning performance as Spamalot's Lady of the Lake left a permanent mark on the Broadway community that not even 241 episodes of Grey's Anatomy can erase. In a fun twist on the sex column that launched a thousand ships, Ramirez plays a next-gen Carrie Bradshaw named Che Diaz, a non-binary podcaster who pushes the limits of raunch, even for the woman who pioneered the privacy-shirking genre. It's a clever way to put Carrie face to face with modern gender politics, and Ramirez makes for an affable but no-nonsense messenger. Now if Che could just stumble into a Broadway karaoke night with Herbert Wexley…
Isaac Powell (George)- We won’t meet Isaac Powell until the next episode drops, but it sounds like he's going to become a central character very soon—and another one who might teach the ladies a little something about sex (and gender) and the city in the 21st century. He plays a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology named George who "is unconstrained by fashion and gender norms"—quite the divergence from his hyper-masculine Broadway roles (Daniel in Once on This Island and Tony in West Side Story). He's great at playing heteronormative dreamboats, but we're excited to see him do something new, and on such a big platform (to be clear, TV can't keep him. He's a Broadway loaner, and we're going to need him back).
Brenda Vaccaro (Gloria Marquette)- Brenda Vaccaro, who has thus far tip-toed around the show as Mr. Big's secretary Gloria Marquette, is probably the most seasoned stage actor in the cast. If you didn't know already, she has 10 Broadway credits to her name, including three nearly consecutive Tony nominations (Cactus Flower in 1966, How Now, Dow Jones in 1968, and The Goodbye People in 1969). She also has a couple of Golden Globe nominations, an Oscar nomination, and a list of TV and film credits as long as the phone book. All this to say…if Gloria doesn't have a substantial character arc, or at least a huge secret to spill, that's a whole lot of wasted talent.
