Years before the premiere of And Just Like That…, during Sex and the City’s fourth season, over toast points and diner coffee, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) says, “New York is a town of renters. Everybody rents,” to which Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) respond, “I don’t.” By the end of the episode, Carrie doesn’t either. After purchasing her Upper East Side studio in a historic brownstone, she keeps it in her real estate portfolio for decades to come: On the Max reboot And Just Like That…, Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte all still (more or less) live in their homes from the early seasons of the original show, making the real estate just as much a series regular as the fashionable women.
Design nuts will love that And Just Like That…’s second season, which premiered June 22 and airs on Thursdays, takes a more in-depth look at the newer characters’ abodes, from Seema Patel’s (Sarita Choudhury) jewel box on the top floor of an Upper East Side town house, to Lisa Todd (Nicole Ari Parker) and Herbert Wexley’s (Christopher Jackson) insane, custom his-and-hers closets in their palatial co-op.
For the inspiration behind the sets and details on filming locations, we went straight to the best sources: showrunner Michael Patrick King and production designer Miguel López-Castillo. Read on for the inside scoop on some of the show’s most glamorous shooting spots.
Carrie’s Upper East Side Jewel Box
If the show—both the original and And Just Like That…—has one iconic recurring scene, it’s Carrie sitting at her East 73rd Street–facing window pecking away at her laptop—probably writing, “I couldn’t help but wonder.” Though she mentions that her beloved home is uptown more than once throughout the series’ six seasons, both movies, and the reboot, the famous brownstone is actually on the West Village’s Perry Street. Today, the downtown home is worth about $21 million, but back when the columnist was renting her studio apartment, she paid only $700 per month, which is a bit absurd even in a rent-controlled building. In fact, Sarah Jessica Parker’s own West Village apartment sold for a whopping $15.8 million in 2020.
Of course, Carrie also lives in a Fifth Avenue apartment with her late husband, and, for a brief time, in an all-white Tribeca loft near the Hudson River, but she always tends to return to her first home, proving that “you can go home again, but it will cost you,” which she admits in the first Sex and the City movie.
Carrie’s Tribeca Condo
After her on-again-off-again relationship finally ends when Big (Chris Noth) dies in the opening episode of the reboot, Carrie decides to move out of the home she and her husband shared. And, like anyone forced to make an important decision during an emotionally distressing event, Carrie is not thinking straight. She buys an ultra-contemporary loft (another sharp departure from Carrie’s usual polished, moody, and feminine aesthetic) in Tribeca. After only one day—and hours of a mysterious beeping in the kitchen—she realizes how much she missed the warmth and familiarity of uptown and puts the loft back on the market.
Carrie and Big’s Fifth Avenue Paradise
The first Sex and the City movie opens with Carrie and Big’s seemingly never-ending search for the perfect apartment, which, in New York, can certainly present a challenge. They finally find one, though it is wildly out of their price range, on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue building. Unfortunately, with Big’s commitment issues to blame, the couple does not spend a single night in their light-filled prewar haven, but they end up buying an equally glorious apartment just a few stories down. And that’s where they live until Big’s untimely death in the first episode of the And Just Like That….
Miranda’s Prospect Heights Brownstone
In the last season of the original series, Miranda, her husband, and their toddler pack up their home on the Upper West Side and move into their new digs in Brooklyn. Though the neighborhood was never actually revealed, the home that the crew films in is in the historic Prospect Heights neighborhood, where homes go for over $4.5 million, on average. As AJLT’s second season begins, Miranda is living in Los Angeles with new partner Che (Sara Ramirez), soaking up the sunshine and the charm of an airy bungalow. But soon she’s called back to New York when her son Brady (Niall Cunningham) has an emergency, meaning she’s once again shacking up unhappily with now ex Steve (David Eigenberg). Will there be another home in her future? Only time will tell.
Charlotte’s Park Avenue Apartment
Charlotte leaves her one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side to move into her current prewar home on Park Avenue when she marries Trey (Kyle MacLachlan) in season three of SATC. She stays there through her divorce, remarriage to Harry (Evan Handler), and the birth of their two daughters. It’s traditional in both its architecture with high ceilings, heavy crown molding, wide-plank hardwood floors, and its interiors, which Charlotte outfits herself back in season four of the original series. Charlotte’s home, from the address at 930 Park Avenue to the specific decor choices, is a reflection of her personality: classic, tailored, and Waspy—even after she converts to Judaism.
Lisa Todd Wexley’s Upper East Side Home
Lisa is Charlotte’s fellow mom friend who approaches PTA meetings and school fundraisers with the same gusto and seriousness she decorates her home. Like Charlotte, Lisa lives on the Upper East Side in a multi-bedroom apartment that—unlike the other women’s homes—is chock-full of contemporary art. Eagle-eye viewers can spot conversation-worthy pieces by the likes of Gordon Parks, Mickalene Thomas, Deborah Roberts, and Derrick Adams, among others.
While a real apartment was used for the first season’s filming, it “would have been a nightmare to keep going into that building and going up and down the stairs,” says King. So, for the second season, they focused on creating just one set for Lisa and husband Herbert; a spectacular primary bedroom closet. As King reveals, LTW’s character bio states that she’s on the International Best Dressed List, but is also a documentarian. “We wanted her space to be like Alice in Wonderland: Fashion, color, and then in the corner she’s jammed in her workspace,” he says.
King’s major request from production was a large 1930s-style swinging door that connected LTW’s side of the closet with Herbert’s, with hers being white-tufted leather and his brown. The custom piece is a showstopper, but was no easy feat to assemble: It ended up clocking in at 900 pounds.
Seema Patel’s Top-Floor Aerie
King was adamant that Seema, as a high-end realtor, would live in a town house; one of “those very thin town houses you see on the Upper East Side,” he says. “We figured that she would have seen this jewel box and immediately made it hers.” In the second season, we get a peek into her bedroom, which is actually a constructed set. King and the production team drew on the character’s old Hollywood movie star energy for the decor, zeroing in on a modern take on Art Deco, with a color palette of dark rose, light lavender, and aubergine.
Even details like how Seema would light her bookcases were not overlooked. And, from a technical standpoint, “It’s great if the bookcases are lit because then you can silhouette their faces when they’re having sex against them,” King notes cheekily.
Dr. Nya Wallace’s Brooklyn Loft
When King and the production team were debating where Miranda’s former professor Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) would live, they knew it would be Brooklyn, but it was important to differentiate her home geographically and design-wise from Miranda’s more family-oriented brownstone. “We wanted a Brooklyn artist-teacher’s loft, which is brick, and books, and a kitchen, because they care about food,” King says. López-Castillo pictured it in a less trendy neighborhood than Miranda’s, with a mix of refurbished and brand-new elements. “We wanted exposed beams, and a concrete floor; a nice space that is customized for them, by them,” he adds.
This set was also probably the favorite of the crew. “All the PAs were like, ‘Oh, I want to move in here!’ It’s the one place that everyone wanted because they could see themselves in it,” Lopez-Castillo says.
Enid Frick’s Tony Upper East Side Town House
Unlike some of the other new filming locations, Carrie’s former Vogue editor’s town house is a real home, located in the East 70s on the Upper East Side, where most town homes go for tens of millions of dollars. “We wanted it exactly as it was [for filming], because it was perfect,” King says. He felt its elegant, understated furnishings were an ideal match for Enid Frick’s (Candice Bergen) classic (and expensive) taste.
Aside from the decor, the town house’s owners also had quite the robust art collection, which King and López-Castillo felt matched Enid’s character exactly. “We had this hunt to get all the art cleared [to be shown on camera], but it happened!” King says. But barely: “Some of the approvals didn’t come in until two nights before we shot,” adds López-Castillo.
Che Diaz’s Modern New York Crash Pad
While Che’s NYC apartment was built on a soundstage, its layout was lifted basically foot-for-foot from a real floor plan from a Hudson Yards listing. In this relatively new neighborhood chock-full of sleek, towering condo buildings, one-bedroom rentals can be as much as nearly $9,000 a month. “We wanted it to look sort of modern, sterile, and not comfy,” says King. “We don’t really think that Che thinks a lot about their environment. They think about their career. And whatever they brought from their other place probably came in milk crates with some art pieces, like photographs. And then they got everything new from IKEA.” The result is a fairly personality-less yet sleek apartment. And its lack of specificity is very much important to the show’s narrative. “You’ll see for reasons coming up that we wanted it to look almost empty,” King reveals.