Streaming
The AJLT Writers Answered Your Burning Questions About Harry's Full-Frontal Scene
“As soon as [the director] said cut, everybody screamed and applauded.”
Every time And Just Like That... proves wilder than Sex and the City ever was, we thank our lucky stars for the sequel series’ accompanying Writers Room podcast, where showrunner Michael Patrick King and his colleagues explain the decisions behind the show’s plot points. In the HBO Max series’ Jan. 20 episode, one scene finds Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) in her bathroom, encouraging her husband, Harry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler), to wear a heart-monitoring fitness ring. But just as the moment turned sexual and Charlotte got on her knees to unzip his pants, their daughter Lily (Cathy Ang) enters the room unannounced and interrupts the moment. For the rest of the episode, Charlotte chases after Lily in hopes of discussing the mishap, but most viewers’ minds were stuck on Harry’s unexpectedly large penis, which appeared onscreen for a split second during the awkward moment.
On the Writers Room podcast’s latest episode, King spoke about the writers’ decision to portray Charlotte and Harry’s sex life as “spontaneous” and “healthy” through the near-sex scene — during which, he revealed, Handler was wearing a prosthetic penis. “It wasn't enough for us to have it happen [like] in other TV shows where you never see the d*ck,” said King. “Harry would have — I decided, and people agreed with me — he would have a substantial penis,” the showrunner continued before calling back to the original HBO series, which ran from 1998 to 2004.
“One of the things that Charlotte says about Harry in Sex and the City is [their] great sex life — that she's repulsed by it, but she wants him,” King explained. “And not that your sex life is dependent on your penis size, but when you're going to show his penis, let's make it be something that's a nice size. Why not?”
Detailing the process of filming the scene, King called Davis “a delight” to work with. “It's so tense because you’re being respectful,” he detailed. “And then when we got that one shot where Lily comes in and Charlotte turns, and she drops the penis, and it’s just that one shot from Lily’s point of view. As soon as [the director] said cut, everybody screamed and applauded.”
The crew’s boisterous reaction was similar to viewers’ response on Twitter, which included shock, excitement, confusion, and comparisons to the episode’s other featured penis, belonging to Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) downstairs neighbor’s lover. (TBD on if that one was prosthetic.) Below, check out fans’ memes and tweets about Harry’s full-frontal nudity on And Just Like That...
