Tour Carrie Bradshaw’s ‘And Just Like That’ Season 3 Home (ft Sarah Jessica Parker)

[upbeat music]

Hello AD.

I'm Miguel Lopez-Castillo, I'm the production designer

for And Just Like That.

I'm Karin Weisel Holmes.

Welcome to your exclusive tour of Carrie Bradshaw's home.

Wait till you see the inside.

[upbeat music]

[Miguel] So we are in the parlor floor of Carrie's home.

This is a townhouse based on an actual structure

in Gramercy Park in a Greek revival style.

We were introduced to the set last season

and Carrie was starting to figure out

how she wanted to live here.

I just have a lot of clothes.

You do.

This was a choice that was about creating a home

for more than just herself.

She made a big decision to leave what we refer to

as the Perry Street apartment

where she spent a better part of her adult life.

I'm selling my apartment.

So she's found this extraordinary couple floors

in Gramercy and over the course

of the season, she makes decisions decorating.

Oh, stay on the runner.

Hi.

Hi.

I got Mexican.

Oh, that's so nice.

But we already, we actually, we just ate

Seema came back to see my new table.

I had worked on the show on Sex in the City Seasons Two

through six and I had worked on And Just Like That

seasons two.

And although I had done a lot of work

in Carrie Bradshaw's existing apartments,

I had never done a new Carrie Bradshaw apartment

from start to finish.

[Miguel] Michael Patrick described it

as the most beautiful apartment in New York.

When Seema first presents it to Carrie says,

I have an exclusive, you want to see it?

You know something worth giving up my jewel box.

Well, the most spectacular place

has showed up on the market.

So before we show you the rest of this floor,

we want to bring you up

to Carrie's bedroom, office and closet.

[upbeat music]

This doesn't actually lead anywhere.

We have to go to another stage.

This is the next stage.

This is a staircase that would lead

from the parlor to the second floor.

[upbeat music]

The chandelier was a chandelier from Plaza Suite

and it had traveled to Boston

or then it traveled to New York, then it traveled to London

and then it traveled back to New York

and it was going to be left in London

and it's a really spectacular piece

and I'm sentimental about it.

So when they were going to just leave it in London,

I said, can we bring it home?

[upbeat music]

Follow me into Carrie's bedroom.

This was a set that we did,

but we did not have this second floor last season.

We faked the dining room on the parlor floor

as the bedroom last season.

Across from here leads you into Carrie's office.

This is the desk that was in her old apartment.

This chair was in her apartment in the series,

as was this table and this blue table,

it's evolved into the office

where she is in the middle

of being incredibly productive on her new book.

[Miguel] Architecturally,

it aligns with directly over the parlor

and these windows are facing to towards the park.

We wanted that direct exposure to daylight

and the large trees.

But then it became a whole other saga

of developing where to best look at her at work

and also the relationship to the outside,

which she has always had

with the positioning of her desk.

We always knew that we were going to build in a loveseat

and we were trying to figure out what is the fabric.

At some point, I had bought a vintage shirt

that looks like this

and it was pointed out to me that Carrie

had that same shirt in her closet

and I had showed it to Sarah Jessica

and she was like, well, what if we made

the built-in out of those shirts?

And a light bulb went off in our heads

and we found shirts on eBay and Etsy

and we put them together.

Some of them had embroidery, so we left in those details.

[upbeat music]

I love working with Karin and Miguel.

I've worked with Karin for years.

She's sentimental about the past

in the ways in which Michael Patrick and I are,

but she also comes with her own

really strong feelings and opinions

and just a wealth of knowledge that I don't have.

And the same from Miguel,

who's just a incredibly gifted production designer.

It's really nice to have these conversations

and I've been having them for 25 years on this show.

Plot element is that she stops writing

about her present time

and she takes a stab at historical fiction

based on old New York.

That's how all of this began to arrive.

You know, visual research, city maps

and into the fashion of the times.

Over here we have a few Easter eggs.

These are Carrie Bradshaw's books

and her collection of Vogue magazines and other magazines.

There's an Architectural Digest here.

Michael Patrick King said that Carrie saw the closet

and that was what sealed the deal

with her buying the apartment.

'cause this closet is very similar

to her old closet in terms of the layout.

Even though structurally it's not the same,

there is something familiar about it.

[upbeat music]

So this is Carrie's closet

and we wanted to really give it a sense of history,

a sense of layering.

We picked these lights to also give it a sense of history.

There are many Easter eggs in here.

Here is the pigeon who lives in the closet.

This you'll recognize

from Carrie's original apartment,

which lived by her entrance.

Since Season One, the clothing,

the shoes, the handbags, the jewelry,

all is archived.

So we work with the costume department

to be able to have Carrie's real wardrobe in here,

which is highly unusual for a TV show.

And if you had time to poke around, there's a story

behind almost all of this clothing.

Exactly, I like my money

right where I can see it, hanging in my closet.

This is the bridesmaid dress from Charlotte's wedding.

This is another iconic piece.

[upbeat music]

This is the guest room and also where Shoe, her cat lives.

It has all of Carrie's old bedding,

bed, dresser and her vanity.

The cat tree was a plot point, which you saw Carrie

and Miranda putting that together.

You don't think this is overkill.

Miranda, she's my only child.

[Karin] And this would've been the fourth bedroom.

And this is now where the shoes live.

Here we see another example

of the older cabinetry in this room,

but we gave it a finish that looks a little dry,

a little scratchy.

It has some wide drawers possibly for print

or maps, something very specific

to some of these period homes.

These are all of Carrie Bradshaw's shoes.

There are some from the original series.

There are some that she wears this season.

We ask everybody who comes in here

what their favorite shoes are.

Everyone has a different favorite shoe.

The ones down there are the ones that Carrie was given

after her shoes were stolen at the party.

[Carrie] They say you shouldn't judge

until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes.

I made it six blocks.

[vehicles whooshing]

[Karin] The Manolo Mary Janes from Vogue are here.

Do you know what these are?

We're not even supposed to be in here.

Manolo Mary Janes.

I thought these were an urban shoe myth.

[Karin] Carrie wore these this season, these are fabulous.

These are from a Woman's Right to Shoes.

These are from the original series.

This is from the series finale from when Carrie's in Paris.

We tried to continue the story here

in a more subtle way with the gold rug.

We didn't want it to pull focus

from the more important shoes.

It found its place in here

and I think it really makes the room.

[upbeat music]

All right, we're back in the first floor.

This is the dining room.

There has been several plot elements

about this dining table.

It also has a large bay window that leads to the garden.

I personally drew the ground plan

and then pulled up a lot of research

from pattern books in the 19th century

that were almost like catalogs

of detailing for house builders.

And a lot of this in the traditional construction

of these houses were all plaster.

Some of these are fairly ornate and precast,

but for example, the cove,

which is the curved piece at least to the flat part

of the ceiling, is really all foam.

And then we also make ceilings

that can be pulled off for stage lighting.

Sometimes we need to build our sets

in a way that makes it more shootable.

So there was an episode in which a big party took place here

before it was decorated and there were many people,

and in order to help light it, they came up

with this way of hiding brackets

for lighting within the architecture of the ceiling.

We tried to really get into her character's head.

Knowing her for so long was helpful

and to really just think about how she lived

and what were her influences

and you know, what kind of shopping she had access to.

I like to think of Carrie Bradshaw at the flea market

or you know, at a vintage store.

I love how much we found and Karin found

in really, really seriously affordable

vintage and consignment shops.

And then there's some fabrics that are for sure higher end

and cost more per yard, but there's a huge amount

that is just from the street, literally, like curbs.

So that's great to see it be put to use

and be really in glory.

We try to add personal life layer touches,

some reference for her book.

We have local drugstore matches,

maybe a Tootsie Roll, that kind of thing.

[Miguel] There are also the kinds of objects

that Sarah Jessica really likes to have.

Michael and I have been there from the beginning

and I think we feel it's incumbent upon us

to share what we know and how we've arrived at decisions.

It's a privilege to be part of the conversation,

but it also is my job and I take it seriously.

It matters a great deal to me, all those details matter.

[upbeat music]

Okay, we're on our way to the kitchen.

Here we go through what would be called the Butler's pantry,

which is the more antique set of details

in terms of the cabinetry and the style,

stained oak with a very waxy preserved finish.

We made this the entertaining area, the bar.

So this is where all that is stored,

and this is more household items.

Our graphics department helps us go the extra mile

by having real Carrie Bradshaw mail.

Then if you go into the kitchen,

we imagine these chairs might've been left here in a closet.

This was something that might've been built in

from the original owner,

and Miguel designed this and the team built it

and made it look old.

[Miguel] We also went with a maybe 1940s out of cabinets.

A lot happens this season in the kitchen,

not Carrie Bradshaw cooking,

no longer sweaters and ovens or shoes.

Do you have a rolling pin.

[Carrie] On me?

In your kitchen?

Are you kidding me, I use my oven for storage.

And the small size is a challenge for shooting,

but this wall does come out.

The cabinets pull out

and they can shoot from behind if need be.

We left this old dispenser of wax paper tinfoil,

just little touches like that.

The rotary dial phone even being not practically usable

I think is really important.

It's a visual aid that has a lot of sentiment meaning,

I think those alone are sort of foundational in a way.

[upbeat music]

This is the garden that Carrie shares

with her new downstairs neighbor Duncan.

And what we see here is a brick courtyard

that in my mind is the oldest part of the house

that was never changed.

So when Carrie first moved in,

she encountered this overgrown, messy,

romantic, wild, bushy place.

So we end up with a much more minimalist style

of landscaping and for the season,

what we're seeing here in the series,

we're in mid to late November.

So we're going into winter.

There's a mix of live and artificial

because it's very, very difficult

to maintain live plants on the stage.

[Karin] The garden also has major plot points.

Oh my god, it's all gone.

There are a few seasons that we go through.

There are a few changes in the garden.

People are met in the garden.

There is a big plot where Carrie and Duncan meet.

Welcome wagon.

I beg your pardon?

Oh, that's something

that we say here in America

when someone joins the neighborhood.

Duncan rents the space downstairs to write

and they have very opposite schedules.

[Miguel] Opposite personalities.

He's very much of a reclusive, intellectual type.

It was amazing to be able to create this space

below Carrie's and to have the spaces be contiguous.

That was very exciting

to have two spaces in the same building

that look so different

from the height of the ceiling to the finishes,

to the colors and even the furniture.

Duncan's apartment he rents,

but he brings his personality into it.

So that was its own decorating challenge

of how to create a space with history

that we knew very little about.

And then to add on top of that, the personality

of a character, how to integrate that into the space.

[upbeat music]

Thanks for coming to Carrie's new home.

It was nice having you over, see you next time.