‘And Just Like That’: Michael Patrick King Knows When the Audience Turned on Che Diaz

Then because of the circumstances we knew, it had to be very limited and had to be a phone call because of time and schedules and and desires. That I just thought, okay, she couldn’t get there ’cause of the fog and she gets to do one thing—which is such a small piece—Annabel Bronstein. And that’s the one that came into my mind. I was like, if you know this show, this is, this is ground zero, Samantha. It’s fabulous. It’s ridiculous. It’s refusing to back down to a lie. So I wanted to touch one moment. And say, remember? She’s still Samantha from Sex and the City, even though she’s on and just like that. And that’s why we fueled in the Sex and the City theme under it. There’s something about Carrie and Samantha. They’re spectacularly together.

Speaking of a couple that might not be spectacular together, we sort of saw the dissolution of Che and Miranda in a real way. This season we really saw different sides of Che. They became fleshed out in some positive and negative ways. so can you talk a little bit about Che’s arc and the ending of Miranda and Che?

I think the trick with season one of And Just Like That was the math equation. You’ve known Miranda 20 years, and you’ve known Naya 20 minutes. You’ve known Carrie 20 years. You’ve known Seema 20 minutes. The volume of investment was so stacked against the new characters just because who are they? Why, why aren’t they talking to the people that I know?

So when you bring in a character like Che, who was by design was supposed to be cocky—people are like, ‘I don’t like Che.’ And I go, ‘You don’t like standups.’ That’s it. Any person who stands on stage and says, ‘I’m the art’ is gonna be off-putting in real life. And, you know, they have to be dynamic. They have to be sexual because that was what we wanted to do with Miranda, was awaken that part of herself by this giant Niagara Falls of being pulled to this darker personality for what she’s used to. I mean, put Che against Steve and it’s like dark versus light, you know?

That’s what was troubling and exciting about the first season. People made a snap judgment about Che based on their cockiness, their arrogance, and I think ,quite frankly, their sexuality. I think it was all fine until Che fingered Miranda in the kitchen, while Carrie was peeing in the Snapple bottle.

That was an iconic moment.

First of all, what I love about it is you’ve never seen that anywhere. That combo plate you’ve never seen anywhere?

Not since either.

As I look at it, I think that freaked the audience out so much that they went into some sort of seatbelt mode with the first season. Like, what’s gonna happen next if that happened? They were terrified. Che was great the first couple of episodes. And then once the finger happened and the marriage split, Che became a villain. I also think what’s interesting about Che is whenever a character is new—not seen before—it’s like ‘What? No.’ 

People reject things they don’t know or understand or haven’t seen.

One of my, my battle cries for this season was et them to see more of Che. Write more sides. So you had a whole evolutionary chart of Che from insecure in LA to cocky again buying an apartment. [laughs]. You guys with the Hudson Yards shame… it really made me laugh. It really made me laugh because I made sure it was Hudson Yards because of what that represented, which is new money, garbage, no soul.