I keep forgetting GIFs don’t work on our dumb mobile site, which is a real shame, because Samantha’s expression of disdain over her cocktail here is delightful. Anyway: Yesterday, Sarah Jessica Parker confirmed that HBO Max has greenlit And Just Like That, a revival of Sex and the City that will not include the legendary Ms. Samantha Jones.
“WHAT?” you may shriek. But it’s not an enormous surprise that Cattrall is not present, given that the animosity between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker is pretty well-documented, at least in one direction — and is rumored to flow both ways, though SJP has never publicly said so and I suspect never, ever would even if she had a collection of Samantha voodoo dolls in her attic. In other words: While I don’t think Kim would have agreed to come back even if they’d bought her a small island (or in Pacey Witter grand-gesture fashion, a wall of her very own), I also would not be shocked to hear that there were no plans to ask her regardless.
SJP released a trailer of sorts on her Instagram, which is really just… a collection of New York City b-roll, so don’t get too excited. And indeed, I am not. My initial response ANY time I heard rumors of this project: Why? WHO WANTS THIS, other than the people in it? Now, I admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of the show during its original run; I found it frustrating, and the movies, even more so (the second one is an utter abomination). I’m glad it’ll be providing jobs to actors and crew people in New York — as I saw someone point out on Twitter, there are a lot of people there whose lifeblood was working on Broadway, and that won’t happen for them now for a long time — and maybe SJP, a theater person through and through, will take extraordinary measures to try and cast them in the vein of The Good Wife and Law & Order. (SATC may have done that too, the first time around; I don’t know it well enough to say.) But surely ANY show shooting in New York could also do this? I just… let me turn once more to Ms. Samantha Jones’s wisdom:
That could also apply to any mutual or one-way animosity, but beyond that, not everything needs to be reawakened. Sex and the City is one show that I really think should stay in the past. Let it be what it was to the people who loved it, especially because nothing good came of it the last two times it they exhumed it. I also think it’s tacky (or perhaps hubris) to do it with three out of four, as if Samantha never mattered, as is she is so disposable to the show’s chemistry and success.
What do you think? Will you watch, will you watch through your fingers, or are you OUT?
