For 13 years following Sex and the City’s series finale, fans couldn’t help but wonder how Mr. Big got his name, John.
In the show’s final moment, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) revealed her off-and-on love’s name when she opened her bedazzled flip phone to show John was calling her. Until that point, viewers only knew the character, played by Chris Noth, by the moniker Carrie had given him in his debut episode.
“I just went, ‘John,’” executive producer Michael Patrick King explained to Entertainment Weekly while miming typing on a keyboard. “I told all the writers and they were like, ‘What the hell?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we have to say his name, because now he’s real.’”
As for why he chose a common name for the highly-anticipated reveal, King explained that he wanted to keep the moment as simple as possible. “If I was giving him a name, I wanted it to be the most generic, American, almost pilgrim name,” he said. “It’s just John.”
In addition to finally revealing why the character got his name, the HBO show’s execs released a never-before-seen alternative opening to the series last month that excluded the now-famous moment where a tutu-clad Parker got splashed by a bus with her ad on it.
“There were two wardrobes. One was the tutu, and we did one pass where Sarah Jessica was wearing a blue dress and didn’t get splashed; instead, she trips when she sees the ad,” series creator Darren Star told EW of filming in March 1998. “In my mind, it was a nod to The Dick Van Dyke Show, but we didn’t use it. It’s in the archives.”
Sex and the City ran for six seasons from 1998-2004 and also starred Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis.
