Sex and the City reboot ‘won’t disrespect Samantha’ and will explain absence, says Kristin Davis
Kristin Davis addressed how the show will deal with Kim Cattrall’s absence. (NBC/Getty Images)
The new Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…, will address the absence of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha Jones in a “respectful” way.
Fans were left devastated when it was confirmed that man-eating vamp Samantha ones would not be returning for the HBO Max sequel series.
One of the biggest questions on fans’ lips has been how the show will address her absence. And ahead of Thursday’s And Just Like That… premiere, Kristin Davis has confirmed the show will tackle it head-on.
Davis, who plays Charlotte York, toldNBC’s Today Show on Tuesday: “We love Samantha.
“Samantha is never not going to be a part in some way, so there is respect for Samantha.
“It’s part of the story. We’d never disrespect Samantha.”
Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall on the set of Sex and the City. (Tom Kingston/WireImage)
Speaking to The New York Times, showrunner Michael Patrick King shrugged off speculation that the show had killed off Samantha.
“Nobody’s dead,” he bluntly said, before adding: “And Just Like That… was never four.
“It never was on the radar as four because Kim Cattrall, for whatever reason, didn’t want to play Samantha anymore while we were doing the [third, and ultimately unmade] movie.
“I never thought: ‘Oh, there’s a hole I have to fill.’ Samantha doesn’t not exist in their lives. The show was born of these three characters.
“This isn’t what was; it’s what’s next.”
Even as scandal seized the show, Kristin Davis ‘hoped’ for Sex and the City reboot
Fans have long sought another instalment of Sex and the City, which originally aired as a television show from 1998 to 2004.
But dreams were dashed in 2017 when Sarah Jessica Parker said a third film would not be made as Cattrall had declined to return.
Cattrall and Parked had long reportedly been at loggerheads with one another, with the feud ripping through the decades-long franchice.
Claims of on-set tensions and clashes over pay between the two were downplayed by the cast.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall filming Sex and the City on March 15, 2001. (Tom Kingston/WireImage)
“I think Sarah was right: people don’t want to believe that we get on,” Cattrall told The Daily Mail in 2010. “They have too much invested in the idea of two strong, successful women fighting with each other. It makes for juicy gossip and copy.”
However, Cattrall later said, in 2017, that she and Parker had “never been friends” – something Parker said she found “upsetting”.
Cattrall would go on to call Parker “cruel… then and now” after she publicly reached out following the death of Cattrall’s brother.
Addressing her decision to exit the franchise, Cattrall told The Guardian last year: “I went past the finish line playing Samantha Jones because I loved Sex and the City. It was a blessing in so many ways but after the second movie I’d had enough.”
