While millions of viewers expressed how much they missed the beloved Samantha Jones on the first season of And Just Like That, Kim Cattrall has happily moved on from portraying the iconic role. In a new cover story for Variety, Cattrall opened up about turning down the chance to ever play her again (3 times!) and what she has learned about herself in the decade since she lit up our screens as part of the second Sex and The City (SATC) film.
Speaking to the publication, Cattrall, 65, revealed that she was “ready” to walk away from SATC years ago. For the magazine’s ‘Power of Women’ issue, the Mannequin actress said she “would never want to look back on that [character, Samantha Jones] with anything other than pride.” After filming 6 seasons and 2 films after that, Cattrall explained, “Everything in me went, ‘I’m done.'”
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In 2017, Cattrall received a script for the supposed third SATC movie (that never came to be), and she turned it down. This decision, seems to be the reason Cattrall notes, why she was not invited to join the cast of the HBO Max reboot, And Just Like That. “I made my feelings clear after the possible third movie, so I found out about [the reboot] like everyone else did — on social media,” she said of the first announcement that her original castmates Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis and more would be reprising their past roles.
When asked how she felt about the show she was once part of continuing without her, Cattrall admitted that she wasn’t sure how to feel, but will always love Samantha and is now excited to be working on other projects. “It’s odd, isn’t it? I don’t know how to feel about it,” she replied after being asked for her thoughts on the reboot. “It’s so finite for me, so it doesn’t continue. I think I would ponder it more if I didn’t have something like Queer as Folk or How I Met Your Father. That’s kind of where I’m centered around. This feels like an echo of the past…I loved [Samantha]. I loved her so, so, so much. It’s tough competition. The original show is in all of our imaginations. But for me, it feels clean.”
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While Cattrall’s character on the original series certainly stole the show (and arguably in so many scenes in the film as well), she added that leaving the franchise altogether was the “right” thing to do, in her eyes. “And you can’t go against that feeling,” she affirmed. “I don’t ever want to be on a set and not want to be there.”
Of course, with a legacy as enduring and adored as Samantha’s, Cattrall stressed that she was touched by the fan reactions to her character’s impact over the years. She told Variety that “the greatest compliment I could have as an actor is to be missed.” One thing fans might not have expected (since she played Samantha so amazingly!) is that in the later seasons, Cattrall began struggling with how she would bring Samantha’s signature energy and enthusiasm to specific scenes while still keeping things new and interesting.
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“I always wanted to make it as honest as possible but also make it Samantha. I remember saying to a girlfriend of mine: ‘Oh, shit! I have to fall on the bed again. How am I going to do it this time? Am I going to sing opera? How am I going to make it unique?’ That’s how much fun I was having with it,” she said. Cattrall then noted, “And then when that was dampened, it was time to move on.”
While a Samantha Jones revival is out of the question (we understand, but sigh), Cattrall fans can still see her star on Hulu’s How I Met Your Father with Hilary Duff, streaming now, and the upcoming Queer as Folk reboot, out next month via Peacock.
