Carrie Bradshaw, widow? Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Sex and the City writer Michael Patrick King sat down to discuss the potential third film with journalist James Andrew Miller, who claimed he saw an early version of the script that included the death of Chris Noth’s Mr. Big.
“People close to Kim believe that the script didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha,” Miller said on an episode of his “Origins” podcast released on Monday, November 19. ”They point to the fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
While Noth told Miller that he would have liked to reunite with Parker, Davis, Nixon and the rest of the cast for a third film, he also hated “the cornball s—t” in the film versions of the HBO hit.
“I really hate corny stuff and it could be because I’m a little bit of a cynic. Like, the whole thing at the end of the movie in the shoe closet, hated it,” he noted, referring to his character proposing to Parker’s Carrie in the final scene of the 2008 Sex and the City movie. “Hated the thing at the end of the movie after I felt she deceived me and then I say, ‘Well, it’s time I give you a bigger diamond ring.’ Hated it. … I thought it was just really sentimental and overly romantic without any feet in realism.”
Reports surfaced in 2017 that plans to make a third installment of SATC stalled when Kim Cattrall, who played Samantha Jones, wasn’t interested. King, who wrote and executive produced the show and films, told Miller that the tension between Cattrall and the other women was apparent during filming.
“Kristin, Cynthia and Sarah Jessica became one group, and Kim never joined mentally,” King said. “Kim fought and said ‘I’m everyone’s favorite’ … [Parker’s] name was contractually, legally, righteously, the only name on the poster due to the fact that she was a movie star in 1998 when the series started and she did a leap to do a show about sex on [HBO], the channel that did the fights, and it doesn’t matter how popular you are. I guess for Kim it didn’t matter how much the raise became if there was never parity, but there was never going to be parity.”
Parker, for her part, denied the idea that she fought with her costar because the series “just couldn’t have functioned” with all of the drama.
“I’m not in a catfight with anybody, I’ve never publicly ever said anything unfriendly, unappreciative about Kim because that’s not how I feel about her,” the Divorce star told Miller.
Davis added: “It’s tough when you’ve worked with someone for 20 years. You want to have respect and I have respect … it’s very hard because we were crushed by not doing that third film. It’s so hard to get a film starring four women greenlit, even when you are a household name around the world.”
While Cattrall did not participate in the podcast, her rep told Miller “that she’s already said everything she wants to say about Sex and the City.”
Sex and the City originally aired on HBO for six seasons from 1998 to 2004.
