Yahoo News And Just Like That gives first glimpse of Stanford since Willie Garson's death
Warning: This article contains spoilers from And Just Like That season 2, episode 10, "The Last Supper Part One: Appetizer."
Sex and the City actor Willie Garson makes a posthumous appearance as Stanford Blatch on this week's episode of And Just Like That.
The character played by Garson, who died last September from pancreatic cancer, had already been referenced on season 2 in previous episodes. But Stanford appeared through a Photoshopped image given to Mario Cantone's Anthony Marentino by Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. Even Anthony jokes about the Photoshop job in a self-referential quip. ("Good Photoshop!")
Previously, we learned that Stanford left New York to travel Tokyo with a new client, who's a TikTok star. In episode 10, Carrie sits down with Anthony in her apartment as a favor to her bestie. She relays that Stanford has been fired by said TikTok star after getting into an argument. She went off to Berlin and he decided to stay in Japan to see Geishas in Kyoto. Wandering the city in a slump, he stumbled into a temple and decided to become — wait for it — a Shinto monk.
Anthony's reaction seems appropriate: "Get the f--- out of here!"
Craig Blankenhorn/Max Max Mario Cantone, Sarah Jessica Parker
"Carrie, for the first time in my life, I felt peace — real peace," Stanford writes in a letter of stepping into the Japanese temple for the first time. And why, pray tell, did Stanford not tell Anthony directly? There's an answer for that, too. "I'd tell Anthony myself, but I know he'd make fun of it," the letter notes. It also mentions that Stanford's lawyers left the apartment and all his possessions to Anthony. "I have let go of all things that no longer serve me, and I let it all go with love," he writes.
"I think that's important once characters are established that, when a circumstance is handed [to] you that is tragic and less than ideal, you can still keep these fictional people alive in spite of the fact that Willie's gone," showrunner Michael Patrick King previously told PEOPLE.
Speaking in the season 1 making-of documentary special for And Just Like That, Parker said of Garson's passing, "I cannot believe I can't call him. I can't believe it. He would always tell me that he was the most popular character on the show and he was not making a joke. He was quite serious. Turned out he might've been right."
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