SJP would like to clear a few things up about that Kim Cattrall ‘catfight’

Sex and the City fans went into overdrive last year when And Just Like That, a reboot of the original cult series hit TV screens around the world. One very important person was missing though: Kim Cattrall. 

The woman behind the much-loved PR mogul, Samantha Jones, there were all kinds of explanations as to why she wouldn’t be making a comeback – many of which pertained to a well-covered fallout with former co-star Sarah Jessica Parker. 

However, while Cattrall herself didn’t return, the legacy of her character lived on in the show. Charlotte and Miranda referenced her on a handful of occasions, she sent flowers to (*spoiler*) Big’s funeral and then there was the infamous diaphragm story Carrie told on the podcast with Che. The finale concluded with a text exchange between Carrie and Samantha, with the two agreeing to catch up over cocktails.

Setting the first season up nicely for a second, and hinting at the possibility of a reunion between Carrie and Samantha, many began speculating that perhaps Cattrall would come back after all. A couple of months later, we learned that the actor was never even approached about joining the reboot. 

Then, SJP said that she wouldn’t really be ok with Cattrall coming back anyway, telling Variety, “I think there’s just too much public history of feelings on her part that she’s shared. I haven’t participated in or read articles, although people are inclined to let me know.”

This week, Parker opened up about the nature of her relationship with Cattrall once again, speaking “at length” to Scott Feinberg on The Hollywood Reporter’s Chatter podcast and commenting that while “it’s very hard to talk about the situation with Kim”, she wanted to “kind of run through how it happened” and clarify a few things.

In her view, their “issues” date back to around 2017 when a third Sex and the City movie was being discussed. Those discussions ultimately “fell apart” because of contractual demands that Cattrall made of Warner Bros., the studio that was to finance and distribute the film.

“They didn’t feel comfortable meeting where she wanted to meet, and so we didn’t do the movie because we didn’t want to do it without Kim,” Parker recounted. “Were we [she and co-stars Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon] disappointed? Sure. But it happens.”

Unfortunately, the situation only escalated from there and Cattrall became more vocal about her feelings toward SJP, claiming that the two had never really been friends in an interview with Piers Morgan’s Life Stories. When asked if the third Sex and the City movie was canned because of “diva” demands (as was the rumour at the time), she responded: “We’ve never been friends. We’ve been colleagues and in some ways, it’s a very healthy place to be because then you have a clear line between your professional life and relationship and your personal.”

She also rejected her being branded a “diva”, adding that it was SJP that drove the issue. “This is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker, is that I think she could have been nicer. I really think she could have been nicer. I don’t know what her issue is,” Kim said at the time. “The thing that still bothers me is this feeling of being in some way made to be the baddie. I never asked for any money, I never asked for any projects, to be thought of as some kind of diva is absolutely ridiculous.”

In 2018, Parker said she was “heartbroken” over Cattrall’s comments. “I mean that whole week, you and I spoke about it… I found it really upsetting because that’s, you know, that’s not the way I recall our experience,” she told Andy Cohen. “So… it’s sad… I always think that what ties us together in this singular experience is the thing. It was a professional experience but it became personal because it was years and years of our lives. So I’m hoping that that sort of eclipses anything that’s been recently spoken.”

A week later, Parker extended her apologies to Cattrall who had just learned the sad news that her brother had been found dead after going missing from his home in Alberta, Canada. “Dearest Kim, my love and condolences to you and yours and Godspeed to your beloved brother. Xx,” Parker wrote under an Instagram post Cattrall shared. To which Kim replied, “I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time.”

“There were just a lot of public conversations about how she felt about the show,” Parker said on the podcast this week – conversations she found “very painful” because they did not reflect “our experience” [meaning hers, Davis’s or Nixon’s]. “I’ve spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody on the set, to take care of people, to be responsible to and for people, both my employers and the people that I feel I’m responsible for as a producer of the show. And there just isn’t anyone else who’s ever talked about me this way.”

Asked why they didn’t approach Kim about being a part of the reboot, Parker said that although she was “a huge contributor to the success” of the original show, they didn’t ask her to be involved in new episodes because “she made it clear that that wasn’t something she wanted to pursue, and it no longer felt comfortable to us, and so it didn’t occur to us.

“That’s not ‘slamming’ her, it’s just learning. You’ve got to listen to somebody, and if they’re publicly talking about something and it doesn’t suggest it’s someplace they want to be, or a person they want to play, or an environment in which they want to be, you get to an age where you’re like, ‘Well, we hear that.’

“We felt comfortable moving on without her and without that part because we knew what Michael [Patrick King, the AJLT showrunner] wanted to do,” Parker continued. “And we thought he handled it beautifully.” 

Concluding her remarks with a plea to the public to stop sensationalising and mischaracterising what happened between her and Cattrall, Parker said that it’s “painful” for her to hear people talking about it.

“I just want to say one thing because you’ve allowed me this opportunity: It’s so painful for people to keep talking about this ‘catfight’ – a ‘fight’, a ‘fight’, a ‘fight’. I’ve never uttered fighting words in my life about anybody that I’ve worked with – ever.

There is not a ‘fight’ going on. There has been no public dispute or spat or conversations or allegations made by me or anybody on my behalf. I wouldn’t do it. That is not the way I would have it. So I just wish that they would stop calling this a ‘catfight’ or an ‘argument,’ because it doesn’t reflect [reality]. There has been one person talking.”