The cast of “And Just Like That...” had a lot to say regarding Meghan McCain’s blistering take on the series, which she called “misguided” and “woke.”
The former co-host of “The View” accused the cast and creative team of “And Just Like That...,” HBO Max’s “Sex and the City” revival, for aiming “to reformat the show into the woke and puritanical times we are living in.”
“There is a way to execute important cultural messages without it feeling like it is being force-fed, and this show ― unfortunately ― really, really fails at that,” McCain wrote in the Daily Mail in December, shortly after the first two episodes of “And Just Like That...” debuted. “It is wokeness superficially shoved down your throat to make a point about wealthy white liberal women ‘evolving’ into the political climate of 2021.”
“Wokeness kills everything,” she added, “and I am disappointed to tell you that ‘And Just Like That’ is another victim of Hollywood trying to placate a specific audience and not the original one, which made it a hit in the first place.”
Actors Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Nicole Ari Parker disputed McCain’s stance in an interview with Andy Cohen for Sirius XM that aired Saturday.
Catch a clip from the interview below.
“Comments like that say more about the person saying them,” said Parker, who plays Lisa Todd Wexley. “What’s too much? Maybe in your living room or when you step outside, it looks the same as inside, and you go to the grocery store and it’s the same. Maybe it is too much for you. For these characters in New York City, it’s not.”
Davis, who plays Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, agreed with her co-star, offering praise for the unusual revival format.
“We took our characters, we put them in a different show with a different name, we brought in new people,” she explained. “I can’t think of another situation where someone has done that with a show. ... People don’t know how to think about it.”
To be fair, “And Just Like That...” has proved to be widely polarizing among critics and longtime “Sex and the City” fans. The New York Times, for instance, blasted the show’s efforts to “to update its sassy turn-of-the-century sensibility for an era of diversity” as “painful.”
Others, like Vanity Fair’s Chris Murphy, praised the series for offering “more reality check than escapist fantasy.”
“Is it perfect? No,” he wrote. “Is it cringey? Absolutely. But ultimately we cringe because we care ― and I can’t stop cringing and caring about these gals about town.”
In her interview with Cohen, Nixon pointed out that “Sex and the City” initially divided critics during its six-season run from 1998 to 2004. Many of those who compared “And Just Like That...” unfavorably to its predecessor, she added, did so because they kept the original “enshrined in nostalgia.”
“This is a show that has always pushed every kind of boundary,” said the actor, who plays Miranda Hobbes. “We don’t want to see these characters … comfortable. We want to see them out of their comfort zones.”