When the Sex and the City revival began to gain some traction, many fans were curious if Kim Cattrall, who played the iconic Samantha Jones, would return for the revival series, And Just Like That…, despite her iffy past with co-star Sarah Jessica Parker. The simple answer was: no. The long answer was: absolutely not.
The show managed as best as they could, referencing texts and calls from Samantha, despite Cattrall never being on screen, or involved at all. In a new interview with Variety, Parker address if she would want Cattrall to come back at all if And Just Like That returns for another season. “I don’t think I would, because I think there’s just too much public history of feelings on her part that she’s shared,” Parker said. “I haven’t participated in or read articles, although people are inclined to let me know.”
Parker goes on to say that they never truly expected Cattrall would be involved from the beginning. “We didn’t go to Kim for this, you know,” she said. “After we didn’t do the movie and the studio couldn’t meet what she wanted to do, we have to hear her and listen to her and what was important to her. It didn’t fit into what was important or needed for us.”
This confirms what producer Michael Patrick King also said recently, that he has “no realistic expectation of Kim Cattrall ever appearing again”
Parker instead believes that small references to Samantha are a more realistic approach to addressing the character’s absence, as opposed to, say, killing her off. “Samantha’s not gone. Samantha’s present, and I think was handled with such respect and elegance,” Parker continues. “She wasn’t villainized. She was a human being who had feelings about a relationship, so I think we found a way to address it which was necessary and important for people that loved her.”
So, it seems like for now, we will have to settle for one-sided phone conversations and text exchanges, instead of seeing Samantha and her spiffy one-liners grace our screens again.