And Just Like That hasn’t felt quite the same without Willie Garson playing the beloved Stanford Blatch. Carrie’s best friend and power-clashing ally appeared in cameos during Season 1, but Garson passed away months before the show’s premiere. This week, however, the series gave the character the loving farewell he deserves—albeit in an unexpected way.
Speaking on the Max podcast And Just Like That... The Writers Room, showrunner Michael Patrick King explained Stanford’s surprising decision to become a monk.
Although we haven’t heard much about Garson’s character this season, we did already know that he remained alive in the show; a few weeks ago, he sent Carrie a kimono from Japan. As we learned this week, he’s decided to give up all his worldly possessions and live there full-time as a Shinto monk—or, as his shocked ex-husband Anthony puts it, “God’s concierge.”
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King explained on the podcast that after Garson’s death, the show scrambled to “explain the loss of our really wonderful friend and actor, Willie Garson playing Stanford Blatch. The thing we came up with is that he went to Japan on a TikTok tour.”
At the same time, King said, that was only a temporary solution. “We skated over it because we had to,” he said. “Because he wasn’t in the show suddenly and we didn’t want Stanford to die. We wanted Willie to be alive as Stanford somewhere in the world.”
This week, Carrie calls Anthony to her apartment with news: Stanford has sent her a letter explaining his choice and noting that he’s left all his possessions to Anthony. As random as that choice might seem, King said it’s the opposite; his source of inspiration actually ties directly back to Sex and the City—specifically, the critically maligned Sex and the City 2.
“I went to Kyoto with Sarah Jessica [Parker] after the second movie, which, I don’t know, spoiler alert: was not received well,” King said as his fellow podcasters laughed. “The critics were not nice to that movie.”
King recalled the “emotional shockwave” he felt as the largely negative reviews sank in. He was in Kyoto, “going from temple to temple ” with Parker, he recalled. “I was sitting there trying to release these complicated feelings, and I felt kind of peace. Sarah was just sitting there with me, and it was so beautiful.”
There were neither tears nor laughter back then, King said. “It was just feeling the space, and these beautiful temples that people would come in—me, a tourist, I’d come in, I’d light a candle, I’d look at the flowers. And because it was Sarah Jessica and I, it always felt more than just me. It was quietly us.”
Several years later, as King found himself wondering how to explain Stanford’s sudden absence from And Just Like That, he remembered that feeling he’d shared with Parker.
“I know Carrie and Stanford had a very deep bond, and I’m happy to say Sarah Jessica and I have a very deep personal bond,” King said. “So I thought, ‘What if he just stayed there in that beautiful blissful temple and became a Shinto monk?’”
For those wondering, King confirmed he’s done his research. You don’t have to be Japanese to become a Shinto monk, he said; you just need to put in an adequate amount of time.
