If you hate New York City you deserve to fall out of a window... At least, that's what's implied in the Sex and the City universe. While there are things about Sex and the City that make no sense, they are pretty consistent about how much they adore The Big Apple. Although the show wasn't always faithful to the big events that happen in New York, it always captured the true essence of the city in all of the best episodes.
Among Sex and the City's best episodes is one of its most shocking... "Splat!". While many exciting things happened in the third-to-last episode of the series, it famously featured a character fatally falling out of a skyscraper window after bashing New York. Thanks to a fascinating article by Vulture, we now know the real reason the creators of the show decided to do this. Here's the truth about Sex and the City's most shocking episode.
Carrie Was Moving Away And They Needed To Top That
In the finale season of the show, Carrie was moving to Paris with her boyfriend, and Sex and the City was therefore coming to an end... So, how do you make the final episodes of a series shocking and exciting when you know your lead character is leaving? Well, you throw someone out of a window.
Not only did Kristen Johnston's Lexi Featherston offer some great comic relief on the series, but she also represented what Carrie Bradshaw was in the very first season of the series. Given how much Carrie had changed over the years, it only made sense to metaphorically throw her old self out the window.
The aptly-named "Splat!" featured Kristen's Lexi literally falling to her death after a pretty vicious speech about how terrible New York City had become... As we said... Sex and the City defended New York with all its heart, so it's not like they would let a speech like this go without consequences. The fall took place at a party thrown by Carrie's Vogue editor Enid Frick (Candice Bergen) and was in the third-to-last episode of the series.
"As soon as Carrie got into a good relationship, we felt like we were going to be out of good material," Cindy Chupack, the co-writer of "Splat!", told Vulture. "But now we thought, What happens if she stopped examining love and just experienced it?"
"Carrie was aware on some level of what she would be sacrificing if she moved to Paris with her boyfriend," executive producer Michael Patrick King said. "We needed to scare her with what her life could be like if she stayed, which is why Lexi was created."
From a story perspective, Lexi represented what Carrie had (and was continuing to) move on from since the very first season of the show.
"The character was a legend in New York," Michael continued. "She’s someone who isn’t intimidated by Carrie, who could just blow by her and go, “Shut the fuck up! I fucking hate you.” We knew it had to be someone with an enormous, voracious talent. I knew Kristen would kill it"
Unfortunately, actor Kristen Johnston was going through many personal struggles at the time. As she said in her book, "Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster", Kristen was binging on red wine and pills. But she managed to rally herself and give the show a great performance.
The Fall Out Of The Window
"The details of her falling out that window, you could almost do a film about it: making sure the ankle twisted, hearing the snap of the heel, the sound of the shower curtain being pulled down, like in Psycho," Michael described. "Even the windows were a major-specific. I knew a person in NYC who lived way high on Central Park West, whose windows were floor to ceiling and opened out from a latch at the bottom."
While a stuntwoman was hired for the fall, Kristen made sure she was the one to take the fall out the window onto the giant pad below it. She ended up doing five or six takes of the fall but did the "New York is over" speech about 30 times.
"There was a thousand ways to do that monologue," Michael described. "She did one, and it was sad and sweet. I went up to her and said, 'Kristen, you just gotta bring down the house.' I mean, that is the worst direction you could give somebody! But she knew what it meant. It’s gotta be, like, fireworks. Then she just did it."
The horrific moment was simultaneously ironic and even funny.
"She screams how lame everyone is and that she’s so bored she can die," Kristen Johnston described. "I don’t think she necessarily deserved it, but she wasn’t some innocent creature. That’s my favorite kind of acting: There is nothing I love more than having people laugh as they’re gasping."
"New York is very treacherous sometimes: You’re always at parties on terraces, where you think, I could fall off," Michael told Vulture. "The idea of falling … falling is really the word. Carrie Bradshaw falling into a very sad part of her life if she doesn’t change it. Getting hit by a car? Not great. Falling into the subway? Not great. But falling from a great height? If one of our girls fell out the window, it wouldn’t have been funny. Lexi was brought in as a target to see what happened to a single party girl who never committed to anything. She had to really fall from the highest height of New York society to the ground."