“Time for bigger and better things,” Karen Pittman said. She’s explaining why she won’t be returning to Max’s Sex and the City revival series And Just Like That, where she played Dr. Nya Wallace in for its first two seasons. Last month, Max announced that she had exited the show ahead of its third season, saying that her commitments to two other streaming shows stood in the way. But in her first public remarks on her departure, Pittman suggested that her packed calendar wasn’t the only reason she bowed out of the show.
Pittman’s character was introduced to viewers as a professor at Columbia Law School who taught a class attended by Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). Over the course of the series, the two became fast friends and, eventually, roommates.
The bulk of Pittman’s scenes were with Nixon, and during a red carpet interview on Friday night, Pittman told Vanity Fair that she will miss working with her.
“She’s just a really warm, beautiful, dynamic person and also a fun actor to work across,” she said prior to a PaleyFest LA event at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. “And just very supportive.”
Pittman also stars on Apple TV+ series The Morning Show, where she plays Mia Jordan. The demands of that role, alone, curtailed her appearances in And Just Like That‘s second season, with executive producer Michael Patrick King told Vanity Fair. Then last month, Netflix announced that Pittman had also joined Mara Brock Akil’s upcoming adaptation of 1975 Judy Blume novel Forever.
In fact, Pittman is so sought-after that Friday’s night’s panel discussion between The Morning Show‘s cast and creators wasn’t her last stop of the day. “After I finish being here and seeing all the fans here at Paleyfest, I will go right back to work tonight,” she said. Not that she’s complaining. “It’s good to be booked!” she said.
According to Max, that popularity is one of the reasons she had to leave And Just Like That. “Due to her commitments to two other streamer series, it has become apparent that filming three shows at once isn’t possible,” the network wrote of Pittman in March.
“Due to the production realities, we are disappointed to announce that scheduling conflicts will not allow us to continue with this character as part of season 3 of And Just Like That. Karen and Nya will be missed, and her Max family and fans will all be cheering her on in her other endeavors.”
But on Friday, Pittman suggested that it might not be that simple. “I think it was a lot of different things that didn’t bring me back to the show,” she said.
“But you know, in a perfect world I would have been able to do it and I can’t. I can’t do it … I love working on the show, but it just didn’t work out.”
Now that she has left And Just Like That, Pittman says she doesn’t know if Nya will get a happily-ever-after ending with lauded chef Toussaint Feldman (Gary Dourdan), who she reunited with in the season two finale. However her storyline ends, Pittman hopes viewers will remember who Nya was, and what she represented on the show.
“I loved portraying an African American woman with braids and living in Brooklyn at this time in New York City,” Pittman said Friday.
“I thought it was important to have someone like that being reflected back to the culture in a show like that. And so I think she made her mark and I think that’s where the story ends.”
