As another new episode of And Just Like That drops, at the same time we are dropped head first into some old school Sex and the City mythology. This week, we see Carrie attempt to be a Good Samaritan after she inadvertently causes a cyclist named George Campbell to injure himself when she steps into a bike lane and they collide.
It’s a great meet cute, really. But fans are more fussed about where we’ve seen our cyclist, played by Peter Hermann, before.
Turns out the actor has already played a pretty key part in Charlotte’s romantic relationship timeline, a while ago. During her brief break up with Harry in season six of Sex and the City, we see her meet a different character played by Hermann at a singles event – a handsome guy whose only real sin is that he is, unfortunately, ‘not Harry’. When Charlotte realises she isn’t interested in this perfectly nice man, it moves her to make things right with Harry that night, and accept his marriage proposal.
Hermann isn’t the first actor to play multiple roles in the Sex and the City / And Just Like That universe. Last season, we saw familiar face William Abadie (a handsome addition to both Gossip Girl and Emily In Paris, also) reappear as a love interest for Seema, but fans quickly recognised him as Tony The Prada Guy from the Jack Berger era of Sex and the City. Season one also brought back Ajay Metha as Seema’s dad – a few decades ago he played an adorable waiter in season two of Sex and the City who offered to go home with Samantha after she was stood up.
Most interestingly, these male actors have all returned to the world of Sex and the City and taken up completely different roles. They don’t pick up their characters back up, so we can find out what journey they might have been on. They return as completely different characters, to better serve the women’s wider storylines, arguably. So it makes us pose the question – does this mean male actors are completely interchangeable in the Sex and the City universe?
Justin Theroux set the standard for the revolving door of male actors on the TV show(s), appearing in both season one and two of Sex and the City. He played a friend of Stanford’s, an author and socialite named Jared, only to return a few episodes later as the legendary premature ejaculator Vaughn.
When asked about his repeat appearances, Theroux suggested that perhaps the show ran out of new actors to cast. ‘Sex and the City was one of those shows that they burned through every actor in the first couple seasons, I guess,’ he said in an interview in 2019. He added that the SATC showrunners approached him about doing a second episode, and discussed how they could make him look different – so the powers that be clearly had no plans to craft any continuation from his first outing onscreen.
So maybe, unlike the women at the very heart of the show, the male presence in the Sex and the City universe is much easier to manipulate and refresh. After all, if they play love interests for the majority of the time – which, due to the heteronormative vibes of SATC in particular, this is likely to be the case – their characters are perhaps more throwaway than our more memorable female cameos and peripheral characters.
Of course, the hype around John Corbett's return as Aidan and the continued love for both David Eigenberg as Steve and Evan Handler as Harry, not to mention the legendary presence of both Stanford and Anthony, shows that not all male characters can be replaced. But we can't deny that some female actors have made a long-lasting impact with their small appearances on both shows.
Our favourite women making their return for And Just Like That include Bitsy Von Muffling (played by Julie Halston), who talks grief and being a widow with Carrie, and icy Vogue editor Enid Frick (played by Candice Bergen). Both actors eased themselves beautifully into the reboot, with new stories to tell and no need for a confusing ditching of continuity for the sake of playing a new character.
So yes – some men may be slightly interchangeable in the Sex and the City universe for a number of reasons. But what feels most positive is that this flexibility with the roles our returning male actors play means that they are able to explore new, exciting storylines, and that the show’s reboot also remains steadfastly committed to telling the important stories of the central women and characters.