“I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me” is a phrase Ron Livingston will never forget.
The actor, 57, famously played Jack Berger on “Sex and the City” and will forever be ingrained in fans’ memory as the man who cowardly ended his relationship with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) on a Post-it note during Season 6.
His wife of 15 years, actress Rosemarie DeWitt, 53, appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show” to promote her newest role in “Out of My Mind” on Wednesday and explained how their life flipped upside down from the backlash of Berger’s breakup note.
“Sex and the City” fans were so unforgiving that DeWitt revealed they would often get confronted by angry viewers while strolling through the city streets after the episode aired in 2003.
“Back in the day, when we first started dating, we’d be walking in the West Village and there’d be those Sex and the City tours and Ron would be like, ‘Go left! Go left!’” DeWitt recalled. “And we’d have to duck into Magnolia Bakery or something because women would come up and scream at him. They’d be like, ‘You broke up with her on a Post-it!’ You know what I mean? So he really got a lot of heat for a long time.”
Barrymore is a die-hard “SATC” fan who even made a guest appearance on the “And Just Like That” reboot. While talking to Livingston and DeWitt, the actress-turned-talk show host revealed that she recently rewatched the original series and believed fans were too hard on Berger.
“When Berger broke up with Carrie on the Post-it note, which is, by the way, so much more than us girls get now. That seems like a novel in this day and age of ghosting,” Barrymore stated, before quoting the Post-it note. “‘I’m sorry.’ Okay. ‘I can’t.’ Now I know where you’re at. ‘Don’t hate me.’ Well, that’s … we’ll figure that out later. I may or may not, but it’s so informative and everyone poo-pooed it back in the day.”
She also revealed that her opinion of Carrie changed when she began rewatching the show.
“Carrie … She’s hard,” Barrymore admitted. “I was like, ‘I want to be Carrie! I’m Carrie!’ Watching it this time, I was like, ‘Uh, Carrie’s a lot. Carrie can push you away. Carrie has got some issues.’”
She admitted that Berger wasn’t the only one to blame for their breakup.
“She [Carrie} really pushed him and … they were not doing well or thriving. He wasn’t the worst guy for having to say, ‘I think we’re in a bad pattern here,’” Barrymore stated.
The “Charlie’s Angels” actress also declared that “we need to let Berger off the hook.”
When DeWitt interjected by noting that Barrymore appeared to have a lot of empathy for Berger in the situation, the beloved TV host replied, “I do! Now, I’m not like, ‘You jerk!’ I’m like, ‘Uh, maybe you needed to go. Maybe you needed to get out of that.’”
“SATC” aired on HBO from 1998 to 2004.
The lady gang Carrie, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) reunited for the reboot (And Just Like That), which premiered on HBO Max in Dec. 2021, sans Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), who publicly declared she didn’t want to reprise the role but made a small cameo at the end of Season 2.
Filming for a third season has already wrapped, with new episodes expected to air in 2025; however, an exact date has not been announced.