Before the premiere of the Sex and the City revival, And Just Like That, fans were concerned about what the absence of Kim Cattrall would mean for the show’s core friend group.
Since Sex and the City premiered in 1998, the story line focused on Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her journey to find love in New York alongside her friends Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha Jones (Cattrall). After six seasons on HBO and two movies, Cattrall made it clear that she was not looking to join the franchise again.
Following the premiere of the Sex and the City revival in December 2021, showrunner Michael Patrick King pointed out how the plan for a Sex and the City reboot never had firm plans to include Cattrall.
“And Just Like That was never, ever intended to be including Kim Cattrall because she decided she didn’t wanna play Samantha many, many years ago. We love Kim. I love Kim. I loved her Samantha, and I knew that everybody, including myself, had invested years in those four friendships,” he told Us Weekly. “So, I didn’t want to pretend that there was an absence — or wasn’t an absence. I wanted to reflect the reality of the fact that there was one not joining. Story wise, I came up with the idea that Samantha’s in London because we didn’t want to kill her. We love Samantha. That’s ridiculous.”
King added: “And life goes on when friendships break up over incidental things that become bigger things. What happens when a friend[ship] breaks up? You still remember the good stuff and you reach out every now and then, but there’s no intention of suddenly, ‘Boom, there she is again.’ It’s about that friendship between those four women that’s important and you see in [Big’s] funeral scene how that resonates.”
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Scroll down for all the times And Just Like That brought up Samantha Jones throughout the series:
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