On a recent episode of And Just Like That… The Writers Room podcast, showrunner Michael Patrick King discussed the latest episode of AJLT season two. In the installment, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) receives a letter from Stanford, where he explains that he’s staying in Japan as a Shinto monk. According to King, it was the best way to honor Garson without killing off his character.
“Ever since Willie died and what we had to do last year was explain the loss of our really wonderful friend and actor, Willie Garson playing Stanford Blatch,” King said. “The thing we came up with is that he went to Japan on a TikTok tour.”
“It was a fast fix,” King added. “It was a little bit…it was like thin ice. We skated over it ‘cause we had to, ‘cause 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.”