Putting it all on display. And Just Like That creator Michael Patrick King opened up about the full-frontal scene they gave Evan Handler‘s Harry Goldenblatt on the show’s “Writers Room” podcast.
During the episode “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” which aired on Thursday, January 20, Lily (Cathy Ang) interrupts an intimate moment between her parents Harry and Charlotte (Kristin Davis). The awkward interaction culminates with a full-frontal shot of Harry, which King, 67, explained was part of the writers’ way of showing the couple’s “spontaneous” sex life. “We really wanted the idea of Charlotte [having] the most fun, the most healthy sex life” possible, they noted.
To convey that sentiment, the writers decided to give viewers an eyeful. “It wasn’t enough for us to have it happen [like] in other TV shows where you never see the d–k,” the Sex and the City creator explained, adding that Handler, 61, wore a prosthetic penis for the scene. “[So] I decided and people agreed with me [that Harry] would have a substantial penis. Because one of the things that Charlotte says about Harry in Sex and the City is [about their] great sex life: that she’s repulsed by it, but she wants him.”
While King acknowledged that “your sex life is [not] dependent on your penis size,” the show’s writers and producers wanted to give viewers something to talk about. “When you’re going to show Harry’s penis, let’s make it be something that’s a nice size. Why not?” he said.
Though the nude scene got the most attention from AJLT fans after the episode aired, King and the writers really wanted to use the moment to dig into Charlotte as a mother. “How can you pass down to your kids a healthy, comfortable relationship to sex?” writer Julie Rottenberg explained. She added that they wanted to explore what to do “when your own hang-ups about sex suddenly are up against what you know is the right thing to do.”
Davis previously spoke about her excitement about seeing Charlotte navigating the trickier aspects of parenting and learning to let go of her own uptight upbringing. “Parenting is a journey and a process, and kids come into the world with their own thing going on and you cannot control that,” the actress said in a December 2021 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
She continued, “And, as we know, Charlotte, one of her central issues is about control, so I think it’s really perfect that she has children that she can’t control. Lily has some stuff coming as well [that] pushes Charlotte’s buttons. Because that’s what children do!”
New episodes of And Just Like That debut on HBO Max every Thursday.
