Sara Ramírez Is Joining The Sex And The City Reboot Show

If you weren’t totally sold on the Sex and the City reboot, this new casting decision may encourage you to tune in. The limited series, called And Just Like That..., will feature three new characters, ostensibly to replace the Birkin-sized void left by Kim Cattrall’s Samantha. Sara Ramírez has just been cast in the new show, in a role that will bring Charlotte, Carrie, and Miranda’s lives squarely into the actually diverse New York City.

Ramírez will play a character named Che Diaz, said HBO Max in a press release. Che is a queer non-binary comedian that also hosts a podcast, where they regularly book Carrie for guest appearances. This is crucial because it means that Carrie will have more jobs than her single freelance column, and in the year of our lord 2021, she would be into podcasting. Che is described as a “big presence with a big heart,” which will hopefully mitigate certain unlikeable traits in other characters (like, say, Carrie cheating on Aiden, which we may still not be over).

Che is also characterized as having an “outrageous sense of humor and progressive, human overview of gender roles [that] has made them and their podcast very popular.” And while it will be so refreshing and, frankly, overdue for this show to fix its “white, moneyed ladies” problem, as Cynthia Nixon once put it — Che’s job as a podcast could be a lazy writer’s vehicle to educate the rest of the characters on the show. Let’s hope the character is given a rich, authentic storyline, and not pigeonholed into doing emotional labor every time they are on screen.

Luckily, there’s comfort in knowing that Ramírez is a talented dramatic and comedic actor. They previously starred as Dr. Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy for over 10 seasons, and won a Tony Award for their performance as the Lady of the Lake in Monty Python’s Spamalot. As an LGBTQ+ activist, they also executive produced The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson and work with many queer Latinx organizations.