From ‘Sex and the City’ to ‘And Just Like That…’—The Writers Reveal the Real Stories Behind the Scripts (EXCLUSIVE)
The writers were fans of 'Sex and the City' before they started writing for it—and it was their first TV job!
The Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That . . . is one of the most talked-about shows on TV, and with the third season in full swing, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte have once again been navigating chaotic relationships, dropping hilarious one-liners and of course, wearing fabulous outfits.
Other than director, writer and executive producer Michael Patrick King, who developed And Just Like That . . . , writers and executive producers Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky are the only Sex and the City veterans to have come back for the show, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they’ve grown up with the iconic characters.
Rottenberg and Zuritsky, who’ve also worked on shows like Smash, Divorce and Odd Mom Out, are a truly dynamic duo. The talented screenwriters sat down with Woman’s World to discuss the wild way they started writing for Sex and the City in the aughts, the art of incorporating their personal lives into their shows and which of the And Just Like That . . . ladies they most identify with.
Woman’s World: How did you start writing for ‘Sex and the City’?
Elisa Zuritsky: Early in our career, we had the good fortune of being represented by the same agency as [Sex and the City creator] Darren Starr. We were very lucky to get a meeting with Darren through the agency while they were writing the third season of Sex and the City.
Julie and I were on a separate track. We had a very small development deal and we were in L.A. pitching our first pilot to the networks. We sold our pilot to ABC and we were very excited. The day we were supposed to leave, our agent called and said, “Hey, guys, I got you a meeting with Darren Starr.”
Julie Rottenberg: This pilot deal was our first time ever doing anything professionally. It was small, but to us it was thrilling because it was a real job. We lived in New York, and going to L.A. and meeting all these people was exciting, but we knew we had to fly home on Thursday. We were big fans of Sex and the City, but when we got the call about the meeting with Darren, we were told it would be on Thursday, and I said, “Oh, too bad. We’re leaving that day. We can’t meet with him,” and our agent, Matt Solo, said, “Change your flight. Sleep on my kid’s floor if you have to. You are not missing that meeting.” That was such a wake-up call.
We changed our flight. We brought our luggage to the meeting with Darren, and the meeting wound up being with him and Michael Patrick King and [Sex and the City writers and producers] Jenny Bicks and Cindy Chupack. We were giddy just to be in the same room with those people, because they were our heroes. Just having that meeting felt like a victory. We were like, “We can die now.” We actually forgot about it because they had said they weren’t hiring but might do it one day, and we thought we knew enough to say, “Oh, yeah, they just say that, but it’ll never happen.”
EZ: We were on our own pilot track. So we were like, “That was so much fun. What a special treat.” Then we went through our whole roller coaster ride that so many writers go through. Back then, they were commissioning a million pilots and shooting a small number, and picking up an even smaller number, so our pilot wasn’t made. About nine months went by.
JR: We were devastated. I thought, “Oh, well. That was our one shot. We’ll go back to our day jobs.” We both had other ways to pay the rent. And then, lo and behold, we got a call that Michael Patrick King wanted to hire us.
EZ: It was at the point when Darren departed the show and Michael was taking it over for season 4, and we were in his mind from that meeting. When our agent said that he intended to hire us, we were shocked. We didn’t believe it. We had one more meeting with him in New York, which almost fell apart because of us being stupid.
JR: We were sitting at the bar thinking we would recognize him coming in, and it was the most near-death experience we’ve ever had. We look back on that all the time, because it was a miracle that he waited as long as he did. We were sitting in the wrong place, and he was in the right place. We actually did a version of that with Carrie and Aidan in And Just Like That . . . last season. It took many miracles, and he actually hired us.
WW: What was it like writing for the show so early in your careers?
JR: It was our first real writing room job, and we often say it was the both the best and the worst first job to get in this industry. It spoiled us rotten to work on a show that we cared so much about and related to and were fans of, and that was actually watched by other people. We got to work with the most incredible group of writers and actors. They taught us everything we know.
EZ: We had that first experience and we didn’t fully understand all the things that we were learning there. We couldn’t fully know that until we left and entered the wilderness of the television landscape for almost 20 years. To be back with And Just Like That . . . all these years later with so much knowledge and experience under our belts has been really fascinating. We didn’t know what we didn’t know the first time around. Coming back to it, we knew so much more, and it’s been even more gratifying to be able to put our life experience and professional experience into the show.
Having 20 years of history with this show is one of the most special things, and it’s almost indescribable how much of an impact the show has had on us. Both iterations have been life-changing in different ways.
WW: How have you incorporated your personal experiences into your writing?
JR: Using those elements is the entire job description. It’s the way we were raised by Michael Patrick King, who showed us that everything comes from personal experience. Of course, we build stories and fictionalize a lot of what you see, but the rule of thumb is that most of it is born out of personal experience, which can be as upsetting as losing a spouse or as hilarious as Elisa being naked on her bathroom floor after pulling a muscle and me sending my boyfriend over to help her, as we had happen with Miranda in Sex and the City.
EZ: We had our first taste of how our lives can pour right into our characters in the first episode of Sex and the City we ever wrote, “My Motherboard, Myself,” which brought together two of our first pitches in the room. One was that I had just been bra shopping, and I happened to land with a bra salesperson who was a really hands-on bra genius. She was like a scientist who measured me for the first time and was all over me. I was uncomfortable as Miranda was in that episode. I was resentful but then when she put the bra on me, it was the first one that ever fit me properly and I couldn’t believe how supported I felt. It was a whole new thing. I had pitched that story for the theme of support, and Julie also had a support story.
JR: My computer crashed, and I had to take it in to get repaired—
EZ: Don’t forget, your then-boyfriend, now-husband bought you that computer!
JR: My husband, who is the greatest guy ever, and who Elisa found for me, is very tech-savvy. I was freaking out about my computer crashing and losing everything and he got involved and came with me to have it fixed.
EZ: They asked if you backed it up, and of course you hadn’t.
JR: I wanted to throttle my boyfriend. He was driving me crazy when, in fact, his only crime was trying to help me and being an empathetic boyfriend. We pitched these two ideas around the theme of support, and it was such a perfect way to see the genius of Michael running a writer’s room. He heard our ideas about support. He knew he wanted Miranda’s mother to die at some point. He looked up at the board, and as he had said since, that was the clearest example of the theme coming to him and knowing exactly how to put it together like a Rubik’s cube, and we knew those stories with the bra support and the tech support had to be about what’s really emotional support for Miranda and all of the characters.
EZ: With And Just Like That . . . , it’s been thrilling, because now we’re married and have kids and we can have more of those stories. I will claim responsibility for the recent pattern where Charlotte was holding the secret about Harry’s cancer and she kept making the same faux pas over and over again, saying she’d be seeing people at events. That was something I went through two years ago. I was in this strange period because I was overly stressed with the demands of production and trying to be a mom to my teenagers at the same time while feeling fractured and pulled in a million different directions. I didn’t have the same reason for doing that as Charlotte, thankfully, but I kept making the same faux pas.
WW: Julie, in addition to writing and executive producing ‘And Just Like That . . . ,’ you’ve also directed a few episodes. What has that been like?
JR: Michael Patrick King has given me incredible opportunities to stretch and learn and engage with the show in a thrilling new way. I directed as a kid, and because Elise and I met when we were 9 and we’ve grown up together, she not only knows this about me, but also acted in at least one of my productions. It helps that we’ve known each other since childhood. It really is its own marriage.
I was able to approach the show with a very different eye as a director. Last season, Elisa and I wrote the episode that I directed. Since I had written it and was also directing, it all felt of a piece. This season, I directed two scripts that I didn’t write, and that was also a fascinating experience, because I had a little more distance, and was lucky enough to have these two incredible scripts written by Susan Fales-Hill and Rachel Palmer. It’s ultimately a very collaborative experience. I think the best directors have a clear vision and authority but also make everyone on set feel like their opinion and their artistry matters. That’s what makes the best shows great, and I was lucky enough to have that training.
WW: What is your collaboration with the stars of ‘And Just Like That . . .’ like?
EZ: What’s so essential about our collaboration is that it’s built on a foundation of trust in each other’s work. Except for an early pitch that Michael will do to each one of them individually about their storylines, they are largely in the dark about what’s coming next for them until they actually get the script and we have our big table read. That’s where the collaboration really begins for each episode.
There’s a lot of excitement and support, and they might throw in another idea that we might not have thought of or that they think could help the story or shape it in a slightly deeper way. The real collaboration is being on set with them and seeing their interpretation of what we’ve done. That’s where our trust comes into play. We try not to micromanage their performances, and we sit in awe of every scene brought to life by them—not only the original three actresses but also the other actors on the show. I realize I might sound hyperbolic, but it’s true. I’m genuinely blown away on a daily basis by what colors they find that we didn’t even realize were already in the scripts. It’s a delicate but strong bond of trust that we have in each other.
WW: Do you have a favorite ‘Sex and the City’ episode that you’ve written?
EZ: “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little” is one that I have a special fondness for. I loved the small thread that wound up pulling Carrie and Berger apart and seeing how in complimenting another writer’s work or your boyfriend’s work, you can wind up in a huge conflict with them. I like the comedy of manners of that. I also can’t help but feel a certain pride that that episode launched the juggernaut of “He’s just not that into you,” which ended up becoming a book and a film. It’s a phrase heard around the world!
WW: Which of the ‘And Just Like That . . .’ ladies do you most identify with?
EZ: It’s interesting because it has evolved. I probably always had the most Charlotte in me, but she was different when she was single. I wasn’t like Charlotte as a single person, but I think as Charlotte has evolved, I’ve evolved, and she gives me a lot of ideas. I definitely feel like a lot of things that happen to me wind up being well-suited to Charlotte’s lifestyle with her husband and children.
JR: I used to be a pretty firm Miranda, although one of the biggest stories we gave Carrie, which was the fear of marriage, was part of my life. Aside from a few Carrie examples, I felt very much like Miranda, and now the irony is, as Elisa said, I think between Charlotte evolving into a married mother and me becoming a married mother, in many ways I now relate a lot to her. And Lisa Todd Wexley, in her desperation to be both an ambitious career woman and a very present mom, is someone I relate to a lot. We’ve given her a number of stories that come right out of our lives.
In a way, even Charlotte isn’t a Charlotte! The best you could say about this series is that hopefully, these characters who were once archetypes have changed and grown and don’t always make the choices that their younger selves might have made. I think that’s part of the friction we’ve encountered with this new iteration, but it’s what makes it exciting for us as writers. We get to look at these characters in a new way.
Conversation
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