As the second season of Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That draws to a close this week, actor Sara Ramírez has hit back at people conflating them with the polarising character they play, comedian Che Diaz.
In a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Ramírez took particular issue with a profile published in lifestyle outlet the Cut in June, which questions whether they are “in on the joke”.
“I am not the fictional characters I have played, nor am I responsible for the things that are written for them to say,” Ramírez wrote.
“I am a human being, an artist, an actor,” the Grey’s Anatomy alum continued. “And we are living in a world that has become increasingly hostile toward anyone who dares to free themselves from the gender binary, or disrupt the mainstream.”
The show, a sequel to Sex and the City which was renewed for a third season on Wednesday, introduced Diaz as a new character: a non-binary comedian who co-hosts a podcast with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), then enters a relationship with a married Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and repeatedly mistreats her.
A Guardian review of the first season described Diaz as “an amalgam of contradictions … a comic with no jokes but a pilot on Netflix, a celebrity with a huge following but zero friends”. Online, a frequent refrain refers to Diaz as the worst character on television; the profile in question calls Diaz “a hyperbolized, hypercringe representation of nonbinary identity”.
The actor claimed the article dismissed “a valid existence and real human being in favor of tv show critiques that belonged elsewhere”.
“I have a dry sense of humour and a voice,” they wrote. “And I am not afraid to use either.”
They ended their statement with “some friendly reminders”, including: “When a cis man is in charge and has ultimate control of dialogue actors say, and you have a valid problem with it, perhaps you should be interviewing him.”
Ramírez has issued defences of Diaz in the past. “I’m really proud of the representation that we’ve created,” they said in a New York Times interview in 2022. “We have built a character who is a human being, who is imperfect, who’s complex, who’s not here to be liked.” In the Cut, Ramírez said: “Anybody who benefits from patriarchy is going to have a problem with Che Diaz.”
Earlier this year they told Entertainment Weekly they are “nothing like Che Diaz”, after continued criticisms of the character online.
Season two of And Just Like That concludes this week.
