'And Just Like That...' Showrunner Told John Corbett He Had to Be 'Rock Hard' for Aidan's Return

Members of Team Aidan rejoiced Thursday when the furniture maker and Carrie Bradshaw finally reunited on And Just Like That....

Viewers might have noticed Aidan’s (John Corbett) sense of style changed a bit since they last saw him, and showrunner Michael Patrick King wanted it to be that way.

“We gave John a makeover,” King, 68, said on Thursday’s episode of the And Just Like That... The Writers Room podcast. “We cut his hair, we took the turquoise jewelry away. We told him he had to be rock hard when he came back.”

The Emmy winner said he told Corbett, 62, about the changes he planned for Aidan.

“I said it to John. John knows,” King said. “He was eating fried chicken when I told him and he dropped the fried chicken on the plate and fell down in the booth that we were sitting in and said, ‘I knew’d I was a fatty.’ Then he came back rock hard with short hair.”

King claimed the decision did not boil down to “an aesthetic choice” but an editorial one becuase he wanted Aidan to “come back differently.”

“I thought he was perfect,” King said of Aidan 1.0. “It was a story choice. If we’re bringing somebody back, we have to find some way to bring them back in a new way.”

Writer Elisa Zuritsky pointed out that typically in Hollywood, female actors get asked by directors to change their appearances for a role.

“You might be among the few showrunners who actually clamp down on men to hit the gym and actually like, put a little pressure on their appearance, which most women would say tends to fall into female laps,” Zuritsky, 53, said to King on the And Just Like That... The Writers Room podcast.

King responded by saying that he likes to “flip the script on this show.”

King also teased that the series will show more new sides of Aidan and his relationship with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker).

“Here we are now, bringing Aidan back again, and we have tricks up our sleeves as to how he is new and what we can actually do with the storyline considering — and it’s a very big consider — all the water under the bridge, all the pain they’ve already been through,” King said of Aidan and Carrie’s history. “How much Carrie has hurt him in the past, according to fan boards. Twice. And how badly he took the breakup. In order to wrestle all those realties and not throw them away, this would be the emotional equivalent of saying, we have to do something new with this dynamic that we haven’t done before.”

Not all of the writers wanted to bring back Aidan, but King insisted.

“I knew that there was a story there,” he said. “I know there’s, as [writer and producer] Samantha [Irby] said, an incredible chemistry between John and Sarah Jessica and those characters live on. And he’s already had two manifestations on this show.”

Irby called Aidan “Carries best boyfriend” and said “he is the one who should’ve won” Carrie’s heart over Mr. Big (Chris Noth).

“Aidan is so hot,” continued Irby, 43. “He’s nice. He’s so nice. He builds furniture with his hands. He and Carrie had such an insane chemistry, like it was just jumping off the screen. They just looked so good and perfect.”

On Thursday’s episode of And Just Like That…, Carrie and Aidan met up at a restaurant after she sent him an email to reconnect. The reunion didn’t go smoothly, though, because Carrie went to the incorrect restaurant at first and her phone died, so she couldn’t double check that she had the right place.

King revealed he drew inspiration for Carrie and Aidan’s mishap from one he had with Noth, 68, ahead of And Just Like That… season 1.

“He told me to meet him at a restaurant and the actual locations that you see in the show are those two restaurants,” King said on the Writers Room podcast. “I went to the bad Italian restaurant when I thought it was stood up and my phone died. The address was between, and I was very anticipatory and saw the number and just went in ‘cause I was going to see Chris. And they led me to the back, much like the maitre d' does, and it was unglamorous.”

When King’s phone came back to life, he saw a text from Noth wondering about his whereabouts.

“When my phone came back there was a message from Chris: ‘Where are you?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m here, where are you?’ And he says, ‘I’m in the red booth,’” King recounted. “And I go outside and then I go next door into the most classy, the most gorgeous, and he was, ‘I thought you stood me up.’ ‘And I thought you got lost.’ And then he was having champagne and caviar ... the juxtaposition was so weird.”

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New episodes of And Just Like That… drop Thursdays on Max.