Sex and the City fans were shocked when, in the very first episode of And Just Like That…, HBO’s new sequel to the beloved series, Chris Noth’s Mr. Big (SPOILER ALERT) died of a heart attack after spending 45 minutes on a Peloton. When a friend of actor/writer/producer/director Zoe Lister-Jones, who had worked with Noth in the past, asked what she thought about Big’s shocking offing, her response boiled down to three words: “F*ck Mr. Big.”
That was the final comment in a statement Lister-Jones posted to her Instagram on Thursday night, as The Wrap reported. As she explained:
“Last week, my friend asked me how I felt about Mr. Big’s death on And Just Like That, and I said, honestly, I felt relieved. He asked why and I told him it was because I couldn’t separate the actor from the man, and the man is a sexual predator. My friend was alarmed at my word choice. And to be honest, so was I. I hadn’t thought of this man for so many years, and yet there was a virility to my language that came from somewhere deep and buried.”
Lister-Jones, 39, went on to explain that when she was in her twenties she worked at a club in New York City that Noth owned and occasionally visited. During the times that he was onsite, she noted that “he was consistently sexually inappropriate” with one of her co-workers.
That same year, Lister-Jones booked a guest spot on an episode of Law & Order, which just so happened to coincide with Noth’s return to the series after time spent filming Sex and the City. “He was drunk on set,” she wrote. “During my interrogation scene he had a 22 oz. of beer under the table that he would drink in between takes. In one take he got close to me, sniffed my neck, and whispered, ‘You smell good.’ I didn’t say anything. My friend at the club never said anything. It’s so rare that we do.”
Lister-Jones’ accusations came just hours after The Hollywood Reporter published two separate accounts of women coming forward to say they had been assaulted by Noth. The two women, who were identified by the pseudonyms Lily and Zoe (the latter just seems to be a coincidence), do not know each other but both described strikingly similar situations in which they claim to have been sexually violated by Noth.
In both cases, the women described being forcibly assaulted by Noth, with one of them referring to it as a “rape.” Though the events took place nearly a decade apart, one in 2004 the other in 2015, both women were reportedly triggered by recent publicity for And Just Like That. Reading their stories is was what led Lister-Jones to come forward:
“My experiences are small in comparison to the accounts of assault that have so bravely been shared today. But navigating predation at any level is a burden all women have to bear. And for the most part there is no accountability, and no consequence.
Chris Noth capitalized on the fantasy that women believed Mr. Big represented. And those fantasies often create environments where emotional confusion thrives. Perhaps Big’s death is the communal grief we must all face in mourning that fantasy, in releasing that male archetype we as women have been fed through popular culture, and confronting its dark and pervasive underbelly.”
You can read Lister-Jones’ full post above.
(Via The Wrap)