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When Carrie Bradshaw receives a goodbye letter from her longtime friend, Stanford Blatch in episode four of And Just Like That…, the abruptness of it all was decidedly not like his character.
But there was a reason for the sudden departure: Willie Garson, the actor who played Stanford, tragically passed away aged 57 after a battle with cancer—just before he’d finished filming his scenes for the Sex and the City spin-off.
In the unexpected scene where Carrie reads Stanford’s letter, she discovers he is moving to Tokyo where he secured a deal to manage a TikTok star. He didn’t want to say goodbye to her in-person for fear of overwhelming her while she grieved the loss of her husband, Mr. Big.
But as show runner Michael Patrick King has now revealed, Stanford had much bigger things in store for him in the show—an arc we’d always hoped for the vibrant best friend to Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.
“Stanford’s character always had a borderline career as a manager, and we were going to explore the fact that it wasn’t a real career. It was going to be Carrie and him, feeling the shifts,” King explained in a new interview with Variety.
He added that some elements of his story did, however, remain the same, including the marriage trouble he was having with his husband, Anthony Marantino.
“Anthony and him were probably going to have split anyway,” he described, explaining that the split would have then strengthened his bond with Carrie as they paved new paths without their spouses.
“There was a series of really fun, flirty, hilarious confidante scenes with Carrie that I loved. That old, old, very specific chemistry that Carrie and Stanford have, which is based totally on the uniqueness of Willie and Sarah Jessica’s history.”
There was no denying the bond Parker and Garson shared. After his death the 56-year-old actress penned an emotional tribute to her longtime friend on social media, writing:
“Sometimes silence is a statement. Of the gravity. The anguish. The magnitude of the loss of a 30+ year friendship.”
She then detailed some of the special moments they’d experienced together: “A real friendship that allowed for secrets, adventure, a shared professional family, truth, concerts, road trips, meals, late night phone calls, a mutual devotion to parenthood and all the heartaches and joy that accompany, triumphs, disappointments, fear, rage and years spent on sets (most especially Carrie’s apartment) and laughing late into the night as both Stanford and Carrie and Willie and SJ.”
Stream And Just Like That now on BINGE, live and on demand with a 14-day free trial.
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