When filming a TV show on the streets of New York City, anything can happen. For this week’s episode of And Just Like That... Sarita Choudhury had to run down a sidewalk in heels, chasing after an actor playing a thief who snatches her character Seema’s prized Birkin bag out of her hands.
“That scene — shooting in New York City is something else. You had people walking down the street who thought it was real, so they started chasing after him, like, ‘I’ll get it for you, sister!’ Just booking after this poor actor who didn’t get to explain,” Choudhury said in a recent interview.
While Choudhury had a stunt double if she needed it, she stubbornly (and painfully) did the entire scene herself. “I’m always this idiot: I will always do it and be like, ‘Oh, it’s no problem.’ Meantime, everything is hurting,” Choudhury said. “I was so scared of falling.”
The scene represents two encouraging improvements in the second season of the Max series, the much-discussed revival of the “Sex and the City” franchise. The new season leans more into the spirit of the original show, and it gives us more of Choudhury as Seema — one of the best additions in this new iteration (and, to me, underutilised in its first season).
A glamorous and no-nonsense real estate agent, Seema becomes part of Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) circle of friends when Carrie hires Seema to sell the gargantuan apartment she shared with her late husband, Mr. Big (Chris Noth). While the first season was a mixed bag, it’s hard not to get excited when Seema showed up and be left wanting to see more of her.
In the new season, Choudhury was happy to have the chance to bring out more dimensions of Seema, especially the fun and playful scenes. She noted that in “Season one, [Seema] was working a lot more, but in two, she’s really out and about.” This time, there are more fancy dinners and galas where all the characters mingle, setting the stage for plenty of drama.
Many episodes employ that classic structure familiar to fans of the original series: We see a character (or several) dealing with a disastrous date or relationship quandary, and then the show cuts to several of them discussing it over drinks or brunch. Seema has multiple dating debacles throughout this season. In last week’s season premiere, she discovers her boyfriend still lives with his ex-wife, a major red flag. And in an upcoming episode, a guy she picks up at a bar has, shall we say, issues in the bedroom.
“There’s always a situation where you’re like, ‘Oh, what’s this going to be?’ ‘Oh, who’s that?’ Or, ‘Oh, he’s kind of cute, but what’s that?’ Everything had a twist very quickly,” Choudhury said of her scenes this season. “I just had a ball doing it because those quick turns are so fun for an actor. You have to change your face very quickly into shock and horror.”
That makes moments of physical and situational comedy, like the scene with the bag thief, a fun challenge as an actor. “You have to play the beginning of the scene, which is: You come out, you’re waiting, all cool, you take out the cigarette — and then it turns very quickly,” she said.
“What I loved about that scene was she really cares about her bag,” Choudhury added, connecting that moment to something that, to me, is particularly refreshing about Seema as a character. As Seema describes in the episode, she purchased the bag after landing her first major real estate deal. Throughout the series, in Seema, we get to see a woman who is enjoying her professional success and has no interest in a marriage or a long-term relationship. That kind of character still feels relatively rare (even more rare when it’s a South Asian woman in her 50s).
“You’re so right,” Choudhury said when I pointed this out. “Usually, most people fall into the pressure of marriage, no matter what. But you’re right. She’s crying over a bag that she really earned with all her blood and sweat. She’s not crying over a guy.”
Being proudly single can be freeing. But in a world where marriage is often the norm, it is also challenging. And Just Like That… explores that through Seema’s character at several points this season in ways consistent with the show. For instance, in an upcoming episode, Seema and Carrie decide to split a vacation home rental in the Hamptons. “I can’t spend another weekend sharing a room with a married friend’s kid’s surfboard,” Seema complains to Carrie.
In an episode later this season, she and Carrie book massages at a spa — only to find that because it’s Valentine’s Day, the spa is only doing couples massages. Seema gives the front desk person a piece of her mind: “Do you have a date set aside where you ban couples? No? Because single people have rights, too.”
Choudhury said of the scene: “That was so interesting, to really not budge from this issue, which I, Sarita, wouldn’t have. I would have given up that argument at the beginning. She literally goes on for — it’s at least two pages of dialogue.”
The scene also gives us a glimpse into who Seema is. Choudhury says she doesn’t really give her characters detailed backstories — like, for instance, considering what Seema’s life was like prior to the start of the series — and prefers to rely on what’s directly in each script. (TV and film writers, including those who worked on And Just Like That…, are currently on strike over more equitable pay and working conditions in the streaming era.)
“So there’s an example of a scene where I learned so much about Seema,” she said. “For me, all that’s important are the words that are on the page, not anything else. And my physicality, I’m really into the props — I love that kind of stuff. But the words inform. I can get from the words literally what Seema was like as a child.”
As an actor, Choudhury loves the challenge of finding the physicality of a character or putting her own spin on a line reading. Because of that, she tends to be the kind of actor who doesn’t make suggestions to the writers about her characters and storylines, she said.
“There’s something, to me, golden about getting a script and having to make it work. I like that challenge,” Choudhury said. “So that’s how I love playing it. Like, ‘OK, this is the writing, but I can do anything. I can do anything with my body, with my face.’ So that’s where I can rewrite it if I have to at all.”
She continued: “They always say that the best acting is when you don’t change the line and you keep to even the punctuation. There’s something about when you do that you’re going to find your own way.”
“And Just Like That…” airs Thursdays on Sky Comedy and NOW.