And Just Like That …, the Sex and the City revival is cramming a lot of new cast into the Samantha Jones–shaped void at its heart. The Guardian is reporting that the spot in Carrie’s innermost circle is being filled by Empire’s Nicole Ari Parker. Did she get the gig because she shares a last name with Sarah Jessica Parker? No, that would be insane. Unless …
Parker will be playing Carrie’s new BFF, documentarian Lisa Todd Wexley. She joins Sara Ramirez, Karen Pittman, and Sarita Choudhury in supporting roles on the show. Like many of the ’90s New York comedies, SATC has been criticized for turning one of the most diverse cities in the world into a place with the ethnic makeup of a 1950s country club. “That show was as white as it gets,†said Every Outfit on Sex and the City Instagram co-creator Chelsea Fairless. “They didn’t ever have a person of color as a series regular.†The same criticism has been leveled at Friends. (Yet the world remains silent on Caroline in the City.) Having a woman of color in the core four is a big step in making the world of And Just Like That … resemble the world in which we all live.