By now, And Just Like That… fans know that the iconic Drew Barrymore cameo-ed as herself on this week’s installment of the Sex and the City spin-off. Barrymore got to be scandalized by the size of sweet Giuseppe’s (Sebastiano Pigazzi) “bread basket” when Anthony (Mario Cantone) brought his makeshift “Hot Fella” onto The Drew Barrymore Show. But it’s what Barrymore said off-camera to And Just Like That… showrunner Michael Patrick King that should be making long-time fans of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) raise their eyebrows. According to King, long-time SATC superfan Drew Barrymore stunned everyone on the set of And Just Like That… by defending one of Carrie’s most infamous exes for breaking up with her on a Post-it note!!!
While discussing the Giuseppe/Anthony storyline on this week’s installment of the official And Just Like That… Writers Room podcast, King said that while shooting her scene at The Drew Barrymore Show studio, Barrymore blurted out of nowhere, in her trademark way: “Maybe Berger had it right!”
That’s right, Drew Barrymore, America’s sweetheart, the Queen of Daytime, and one time Charlies Angel, went to bat for Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) and his diabolical Post-it note breakup.
If you have no idea who Jack Berger is in the Sex and the City universe or why fans have long since vilified him over a Post-it note, let’s back up. Carrie meets Jack Berger towards the end of Sex and the City Season 5 and immediately has a crush on the charming novelist. They don’t get together, however, until Season 6. While at first it seems Carrie might have finally found someone who can keep up with her wit, Berger is laden with insecurities. They have a whole fight because the one note Carrie gives him about his novel is that a New York woman wouldn’t wear a scrunchie in the early ’00s. In the 2020s? Definitely, but that’s beside the point as Berger’s novel was not set in a future timeline.
Berger’s inadequacies lead him to break up with Carrie via a Post-it note that simply says in three lines of all caps scrawl: “I CAN’T. I’M SORRY. DON’T HATE ME.”
While this breakup note is a lengthy missive compared to the sheer silence millions of millennial women would go on to experience via the 2010s trend of ghosting — again, Jack Berger, weirdly ahead of his time — it was considered barbaric in the early ’00s. You were supposed to tell a person to their face you were breaking up. (I know, it’s so weird, right?) Carrie is indignant and everyone, including the cop who later arrests her for smoking pot in a dive bar, gets it. Fans got it, too. And Berger’s Post-it note has become secondhand for cruel and unusual torture.
But what if it’s not? What if, as with foreseeing scrunchie trends decades in advance, Berger was on to something? That’s allegedly what Drew Barrymore argued to Michael Patrick King.
“Drew is a super fan and super happy to talk about [Sex and the City and And Just Like That…] and ask questions. And at one point, we were shooting at her studio with her crew and I was directing, and we were all there, and it was working out, and she said, ‘Can I just say one thing?’” King says. “‘Maybe Berger had it right.’”
“‘If you’re gonna break up with someone, just say, “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.” Don’t drag them through weeks of indecision.’”
King went on to say that Barrymore also proposed that Berger’s actions were kind of like an emoji.
“Then we went so far as to say, maybe there should be a Post-it emoji that says, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me’ that people could just send,” King said.
Whether or not the world needs a Jack Berger Post-it emoji is something for far greater minds to decide. As for me, I’m going to be meditating on Drew Barrymore’s opinions on Jack Berger and if he was really not such a bad boyfriend to Carrie after all…