Charlotte and Harry’s adopted daughter Lily Goldenblatt has always been an integral part of the Sex And The City universe. Fans are still slightly salty over the pivotal moment when she single-handedly stopped Carrie’s wedding to Big by hiding her cell phone in a cute, but inconvenient, cupcake handbag as a child.
Almost two decades later in the And Just Like That reboot, Harry and Charlotte’s daughter has grown up and is now played by the actress Cathy Ang. As a teenager, Lily’s plotlines have battled with numerous adult topics including her discovering her body and confronting her adoption.
‘I think she's grown up knowing that she's a transracial adoptee and a lot of people are aware of it because there's just so much more communication now,’ Ang told Yahoo Life.
‘For her generation, it feels like she has done a lot of reading on gender identity sexuality,’ she continued. ‘And you know, she also has a lot of pent-up something, that we kind of saw in the first episode; a lot is going on inside her.’
‘Every teenager has a little bit of sexual exploration and angst,’ Ang added. ‘The thing that grabs our attention more with Lily is… how she and Charlotte will eventually go through that process where Lily is discovering her body.’
These are undeniably complicated and mature topics, which Lily has negotiated and learnt about as the series continued. But this didn’t stop our surprise at the discovery that the actress playing this grown-up teenager was actually a 26-year-old woman.
‘Just found out the actress playing Lily on And Just Like That is 26,’ wrote one user as they discovered the information. ‘I just wouldn’t have guessed,’ added another flabbergasted fan. ‘That girl that plays Lily in And Just Like That IS 26?!?!?,’ exclaimed a third in shock with the brain explosion emoji.
Yup, that’s right. Cathy Ang is a decade older than Lily Goldenblatt. And, really, this shouldn’t be as shocking as it is. Actors have always portrayed teenagers on screen: Olivia Newton John was 29 when she played Sandy as a high schooler in Grease. Similarly, when Rachel McAdams played Regina George she was actually 25.
Nearly everyone in Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Glee and Pretty Little Liars, were in their twenties at the time of filming. And, most recently, fans were shocked to discover that Alexa Demie who plays Maddy Perez in Euphoria is actually 31. The list goes on and on.
Casting often comes down to production or financial logistical issues and many major directors have claimed they cast older actors due to the legal restrictions around having a child on set. Yet the problem with casting adults as teens is that it can offer an unrealistic depiction of the pimple-speckled years of puberty, leaving actual teens insecure about their ever-evolving appearance.
However, the majority of And Just Like That fans have been nostalgic viewers from an older demographic who were first hooked on Sex And The City in the 90s.
Ironically, Cathy Ang told Cosmopolitan of the show: ‘I think if I had watched it as a teen, I wouldn’t have understood as many of the problems they ran into, because I was just a little bit unaware. I appreciated that I waited because it would have felt more foreign to me before, but now I could relate to these characters.’
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