Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
There have already been consequences to the Trump administration’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda. If you ask Bobby Lee, his character on And Just Like That… was a casualty of the war on “woke.” “Some of the woke elements of the show, they got rid of, and I think I was a part of that,” he told Entertainment Weekly in regards to his exclusion from the show’s third season. “I think Sara [Ramirez] didn’t come back and some other people. They tried to put minorities in, and—I don’t know. I never saw the show.”
There has been some personnel turnover at AJLT, and some of the people who didn’t return could indeed be considered “minorities” (as in, not white or able-bodied). Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), Franklyn Silvias (Ivan Hernandez), and Chloe (Ali Stroker) are among those who were written out of the third season. Ramirez, who played Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) controversial love interest Che Diaz, previously suggested that she was let go from the show because of her outspoken support for Palestine. But Nixon herself has also been vocally supportive of the Palestinian people, and everyone involved with the show has maintained that the Che storyline simply ran its course.
If Bobby Lee had watched the show, he’d know that Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) podcast career also ran its course, explaining why her podcast co-workers—Lee, Hernandez, and Stroker—aren’t around anymore. But regardless of the reasoning behind it, he doesn’t appear to have any hard feelings about being let go. “Sarah Jessica Parker is the nicest person I’ve ever met. She made me feel so at ease. I like everyone on there. It was fun. I never have bad blood with anybody. You know what I mean? I am nice. I show up on time,” he told EW. He admitted that he doesn’t “even know why they asked” him to be on the show in the first place. “And I was super scared to do it. Because it wasn’t my brand, really. You know what I mean? But I did it. I walked through the fear.”
