And Just Like That is officially back, returning to our screens with the third instalment of the Sex and the City spin-off, with highly-anticipated new episodes dropping each week.
Like the previous two seasons, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis are at the show's helm, reprising their iconic roles as Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes and Charlotte York. And joining them are AJLT additions Nicole Ari Parker (Lisa Todd Wexley) and Sarita Choudhury (Seema Patel) - firmly becoming cast regulars following their popularity from the past two seasons.
However, one And Just Like That character who is noticeably absent from season three is Che Diaz, played for the first two seasons by Sara Ramirez.
Diaz, a non-binary, queer stand-up comedian, is a key role in the first two seasons, playing Carrie's podcast boss for S1, and going on to date Miranda until halfway through season two.
It was confirmed after the end of the second season that Ramirez would not be returning to the project, with "the Che character [reaching] a natural conclusion."
And following their exit from the show, Ramirez opened up about the role, with the character proving incredibly divisive with AJLT viewers.
"I am not the fictional characters I have played, nor am I responsible for the things that are written for them to say," Ramírez stated in a post on Instagram. "I am a human being, an artist, an actor. And we are living in a world that has become increasingly hostile toward anyone who dares to free themselves from the gender binary, or disrupt the mainstream."
"It was absolutely exhausting to bring this person to life," the AJLT actor later explained to Entertainment Weekly. "I had to stay in a bit of an extroverted mode in order to do that. So the efforts that it took to bring this character forth makes me feel really proud of what I've been able to deliver."
They continued: "I love that people have passionate opinions, that Che struck a nerve. I think it's really interesting to play a person who elicits such strong reactions and who can start much-needed conversations. If the storylines created major water cooler moments after each episode, then we did our job."
This week, Sarah Jessica Parker officially weighed in on the conversation during an interview with The Guardian, explaining that she wasn't aware of the controversy until a friend mentioned it to her.
"A friend of mine brought it up to me, and it's like: 'What are you talking about?'" she recalled in the interview. "And he said: 'Yeah, there's all this conversation.'
"I've been an actor for 50 years, and I've almost never paid attention to peripheral chatter," she continued, before singing Ramirez's praises as an actor, stating: "I loved working with them."
We will continue to update this story.
