“A playmate for Pumpkin!”
Photo: HBO
Audiences worldwide mourn as podcaster-comedian-actor Che Diaz hints that they have been fired from And Just Like That … ahead of the show’s third season. The news that they will not be returning to the Sex and the City spinoff is especially brutal after their multi-cam sitcom, Che Pasa, was axed partway through production.
All bits aside: Sara Ramirez, the actor who plays Che Diaz, wrote a text post on January 16 about casting directors and Hollywood agents making “black lists of actors and workers who post anything in support of Palestinians and Gaza to ensure they will not work again.” Specifically, Ramirez calls out the way these agents stand behind their higher-profile clients who speak out but drop less famous actors. Ramirez has been outspoken in their calls for a cease-fire on social media and has protested in person. The post is phrased as a direct response to the Emmys awarding GLAAD the Governors Award at the January 15 ceremony, calling this sort of industry move “duplicitous” and “even more performative than the last character I played.”
The infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters over at The Daily Mail took that Che reference to mean Ramirez was hinting at being fired from And Just Like That … based on their “use of the past tense.” In response, Ramirez posted an Instagram Story saying, “Don’t let tabloids distract you from what’s happening in Gaza. Really nice try, though.” So the crisis is averted, and Ramirez may live to see another Che. But if it is true that the divisive character has been written off, it presents a golden opportunity for another HBO-slash-Max series going into its third season: They should write Che Diaz into The Gilded Age.
Think of it: Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) narrowly escaped a dysfunctional relationship with Che on the most recent season of AJLT. Like Miranda, Nixon’s Gilded Age character, Ada, is going through a romantic awakening of her own, having married for the first time after being a spinster her entire life. Because this show loves to nip ideas in the bud before dramatic stakes have a chance to bloom, Ada’s husband, Luke (Robert Sean Leonard), immediately gets cancer and dies, like, two episodes after they wed. Luke leaves her a small fortune just as her sister Agnes’s (Christine Baranski) gay son has frittered hers away, so season three will see the power dynamic flip. Now that a freshly widowed Nixon is shaking things up as lady of the house, who better to waltz into her life than Che?
B-but Che is a fictional character from an entirely different franchise!
Quiet, you! This makes perfect sense. Che is a character, but their character is an actor so why not have Che the character play a role on The Gilded Age in an act of true metatextual innovation? Better yet, allow Che to become a sort of modern mythical figure like the Joker, reiterating across various imagined worlds and projects, alchemically haunting Nixon wherever she goes.
What would their role be?
The Gilded Age is addicted to adding Tony Award winners to the expansive ranks of the cast and wasting their musical talents. Ramirez has a Tony for their powerful voice, so let them sing! Opera was thee space for playful gender exploration at the time; this season could expand on the Opera Wars plot of season two with Che joining the company of one of the houses as a singer specializing in trouser roles who seduces Ada in a torrid affair. This would be a thrilling dramatic swing and give Ramirez a chance to play a multifaceted gender-nonconforming role based on real history. And what are operas if not live podcasts set to music?
I’m sold!
Slay!