In a plot twist worthy of And Just Like That…, Kim Cattrall has spoken out about the Sex And The City spin-off, revealing they never asked her to come back to play everyone’s favourite character, Samantha Jones.
“I was never asked to be part of the reboot,” said the 65-year-old actress, who starred in the HBO show between 1998 and 2004, returning for two critically panned but fan-beloved feature films.
“I made my feelings clear after the possible third movie, so I found out about it like everyone else did – on social media. I was like, ‘Ooh, how?’”
Kim, who famously fell out with her co-stars – feuding particularly publicly with Sarah Jessica Parker – went on to tell Variety magazine there was no chance of her ever reprising the role. “That’s a no,” she said when asked about a possible return to join Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte.
“It’s powerful to say no… It’s a great wisdom to know when enough is enough. As difficult as it was, and as scary as it is to stand up and not be bullied… [it’s good] to just say, ‘I’m on this track. It was so great working with you. I so enjoyed it, but I’m over here’.”
She also explained there was more to her refusal to do a third movie than her feud with SJP, laying into the script and calling a storyline where she received unwanted pictures from Miranda’s 14-year-old son Brady “heartbreaking”. She added, “I would have preferred for all of us to have some kind of event to warrant a third film. That didn’t happen.”
The Canadian-British star went on to dismiss the script for AJLT as “basically the third movie. That’s how creative it was.” But she did admit it was “odd” to see it without her iconic character in the line-up, adding, “I don’t know how to feel about it… This feels like an echo of the past.”
The star – who last week pointedly posed for snaps at an event with SATC costume designer Patricia Field and writer Candace Bushnell, who were also not part of the reboot – explained, “The greatest compliment I could have as an actor is to be missed… I’ve left something behind that I’m so proud of. I loved her. I loved her so, so, so much... The original show is in all of our imaginations.
“But for me, it feels clean… I just thought to myself, ‘No, this is right’. And you can’t go against that feeling. I don’t ever want to be on a set and not want to be there.”