'And Just Like That...': Carrie's voice is back, so is the show's soul

"She's messy. It can be messy. But it's real."

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So says Cynthia Nixon — not just of Miranda Hobbes, the character she's embodied for almost three decades, but of the show itself. "And Just Like That...," HBO's "Sex and the City" revival, has come into its own in Season 3: less preoccupied with pleasing everyone, and more interested in telling the truth.

Truth, in this case, looks like complexity. Women in their 50s with evolving identities. Not frozen in time, but changing, reckoning, reliving. Queerness that's joyful but not polished. Grief without melodrama. A pirate shirt with a bleach hole that somehow becomes a talisman of power.

At its glittering European premiere this week, Nixon and costar Sarah Jessica Parker, flanked by Kristin Davis and Sarita Choudhury, spoke candidly with AP about how the show has evolved into something deeper, rawer and more reflective of who they are now.

A VOICE RETURNS

Season 3 marks the return of Carrie Bradshaw's iconic internal monologue that once defined "Sex and the City." The series has always followed Carrie's rhythm, but now it brings back something deeper: her voice. Literally.

"We've always loved the voiceover," Parker said. "It's a rhythm — it's part of the DNA."

The decision to restore it, producers say, was deliberate. The voiceovers return just as Carrie rediscovers her direction — offering viewers a renewed sense of intimacy and connection.

That growth is echoed in her rekindled relationship with Aidan and her acceptance to step back for him to focus on his troubled son.

The character who in 1998 first stopped a cab in Manolo Blahniks — and once floated through Manhattan chasing shoes and column deadlines —is now grounded in reinvention, the wounds of loss and cautious hope. The word is: grown up.

"She doesn't burst into tears or stomp out of the room anymore," Parker said. "She asks smart, patient questions. That's not effort — that's just her nature now."