Chris Noth just put an end to the rumor that Mr. Big would’ve died in Sex and the City 3. That story, if you’re unfamiliar, came from the podcast Origins, which is currently doing a deep-dive into SATC. In one of the episodes, host James Andrew Miller reports people in Kim Cattrall’s inner circle were certain she’d never do a third movie, partially because of a reported storyline that has Mr. Big dying of a heart attack and Carrie Bradshaw grieving his loss.
“They pointed a 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 film more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women,” Miller reports.
But this isn’t true, according to Noth. The actor told Page Six that Mr. Big would be alive and kicking if a third movie ever happened. “He wasn’t going to die,” Noth said. “There’s no way he was dying; that was all a lie.”
That being said, he insists there’s no drama within the Sex and the City community—though, at this point, the possibility of a third movie is unlikely. “There’s no drama, there’s no movie, there’s nothing going on with it, it’s over it’s gone,” Noth said.
To be honest, we’ll probably never know exactly what would have happened in Sex and the City 3. Sarah Jessica Parker says the script was “heartbreaking,” but that could mean anything. Maybe there was a death, or maybe all the women decide to move to Connecticut. Both would be heartbreaking. (Kidding, Connecticut is great!)
We all cried into our cosmos a little when Sarah Jessica Parker confirmed there won’t be a Sex and the City 3 movie, despite rumors of a working screenplay. Things got even sadder after people started pointing fingers at Kim Cattrall, accusing the actress, who plays Samantha, of derailing the reboot because she chose to pass on the project.
Cattrall pushed back at the time, saying she simply wanted to move on from the role. Reports of a cast feud became so loud, though, that Cattrall’s costar Sarah Jessica Parker had to clarify that there’s no fight between the two.
And now, an E News source says tension between the cast really wasn’t the reason why Cattrall wasn’t on board with another Sex and the City reunion. Turns out, she reportedly wasn’t down with the screenplay. “Kim never wanted to really do the movie to begin with,” the source claims, according to E News. “It was a combination of not great money and a bad storyline for Samantha.”
Of course, this comes from an unnamed source—so take it with a grain of salt—but this insider claims the writers gave Samantha a weird story arc that involved sexts from Miranda’s teen son, Brady. As E News puts it, “Early in the film, Brady gets caught masturbating. He is also caught sending ‘dick pics’ of his erect penis to Samantha.” Yikes.
It seems that this plot would have happened in the midst of some massive, emotional developments with Carrie and Big. According to reports, the film called called for Carrie’s husband Mr. Big to die of a heart attack. This twist would have been incredibly intense and sad—and, if the source’s report is true, a strange juxtaposition to Samantha’s storyline.
Plus, remember that Cattrall has always maintained that she’s been ready to move on from the role for a while. Last year, she tweeted at a fan to check out her series Sensitive Skin on Netflix instead of watching SATC. She also shared with the Scottish newspaper The Daily Record that she felt the times had shifted since she portrayed the public relations powerhouse and self-proclaimed “try-sexual.”
“To have four women talking about shopping trips and spending $400 on shoes when people are having trouble putting food on the table? It doesn’t mean we don’t need that, but I think the pendulum swung in a different direction,” she said.
The saga of Sex and the City 3 dominated the Internet for months last fall. We know a script for the movie exists—one that Sarah Jessica Parker says is “beautiful” and “heartbreaking”—but Kim Cattrall opted not to get on board. Why she turned down the project is still a mystery. Cattrall claims it was always a “respectful, firm no” for her, but others say negotiations did take place. Regardless, the movie isn’t happening, which means there’s a whole chapter of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha’s lives that exists but we’ll never see.
A few details about the third movie are pouring out, though. In the latest episode of Cadence13’s podcastOrigins, host James Andrew Miller interviews several SATC cast members and gets to the bottom of why a third flick never panned out. Miller reports that Cattrall’s inner circle believed she’d never do SATC 3 for two reasons: One concerned the film’s plot, which, according to Miller, called for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack. Yup.
“People close to Kim believe she never wanted to do the third movie, period,” Miller says.”And they point to two large issues that made it impossible for anyone close to her to talk her into doing it. First, although each woman was to get $1 million up front, they believe the way the backend had been divided up among the five—the four women and Christopher Rosa Michael Patrick King—was unequal and unfair. And second, people close to Kim believe that the script for the movie didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha. They pointed a 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 film more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
Let’s process that for a second. If Sex and the City 3 came out, Mr. Big would’ve died of a heart attack. Talk about bleak!
However, that might’ve been just what Chris Noth (who played Mr. Big) wanted. The actor reveals in this podcast that he wasn’t keen on the cheesier scenes in the Sex and the City movies.
“I really didn’t enjoy any of the movies,” he said. “I really hate corny stuff. It could be because I’m a little bit of a cynic. The whole thing at the end of the [first] movie with the shoe and the closet: hated it. I’m a team player, but I never really enjoyed the movies. I thought they were sentimental as hell. Even the humor didn’t match the series.”
Release the SATC 3 script, Michael Patrick King! We need to know more.
There are a lot of awful men in Sex and the City. There was Greg, the 27-year-old Charlotte met in the Hamptons who gave her crabs; Harvey, a wealthy conquest of Samantha’s who had a literal servant; and let’s not forget Ethan, who could only have sex with Miranda with porn blaring in the background. (There was Aidan, too, who I personally think was the ultimate fake, but that’s another story—don’t @ me.) But all 107 men Carrie and the girls dated and slept with pale in comparison to the biggest creep of them all: Julian Fisher. You remember Julian: he was briefly Carrie’s editor at Vogue in season 4’s “A Vogue Idea” after her first editor, Enid, was made to appear like a critical ice-queen for having high standards and deigning to tell Carrie her article was too self-involved, meandering, and not up to the magazine’s ideals. Carrie whined, and poof—a menschy male editor appeared.
From the start, we understand Julian won’t be tough on “Cookie”—his inexplicable pet name for Carrie. He’s the fun one who drinks during the day, plays retro jazz in the office, and tells Carrie she belongs at Vogue—but not before taking credit for her being there. The episode famously culminates in a sexualized cat-and-mouse scene that’s played for laughs: Once Carrie hits save on the final draft of her story—late at night in Julian’s office—he rewards her with a trip to her personal Mecca: the Vogue accessories closet. Inside, while Carrie covets a pair of mythical Manolo Blahnik Mary Jane’s, Julian pulls down his pants and stands with his hands on hips—wearing nothing but a pair of black Versace underwear.
When Carrie notices, she bellows, “what are you doing?!” To which Julian says “Just showing you these briefs!” He goes on to snap the band of his Versace’s while Carrie hides and pratfalls over her own feet, blushing behind a rack of handbags. He doesn’t touch her, or force anything on her, and after a few awkward moments Julian eventually puts his pants back on, leading the viewer to possibly conclude that he’s just a quirky guy. A real kook. This was just a page from a cringe-y, old-man-flirts-with-younger woman playbook—nothing more. Or so I thought in 2001, when this episode aired.
Watching the episode this time around, I had a hard time shaking the vision of Carrie getting so drunk before noon that Julian literally has to hold her up, rag-doll style, while she walks out of the office.
But now, framed against the backdrop of #MeToo and the constant conversations we’re having about powerful men abusing their influence, I see Julian wasn’t just a kook—this was textbook sexual harassment. So much so, that he certainly would have earned himself a spot on the “shitty media men” list if such a thing existed in the early aughts.
And let me tell you—watching the episode again, which I did a few days ago, was horrific. From their first scene together, Julian appears to start using grooming tactics on a clearly vulnerable Carrie—he gently touches her chin, he grandly compliments her work and her “vision,” and he plies her with dry martinis in the morning—office door visibly shut—after she’s feeling rejected by Enid. Sure, you could say he was just trying to be nice—and the show was tapping into a glossy media stereotype—but this time around, I had a hard time shaking the vision of Carrie getting so drunk before noon that Julian literally has to hold her up, rag-doll style, while she walks out of the office.
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After that, he takes her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and while, at first glance, it seemed like they had a meaningful conversation, I see now that Julian deftly extracted sensitive, personal information from Carrie and ultimately used it against her.
During the meal Carrie admits she’s thinking about quitting Vogue, and Julian asks, “what would your father say about your quitting?” to which she replies, “he wouldn’t have a whole lot to say about me quitting, he quit my mother and me when I was little.” This is actually the only time in the entire series Carrie talks about her father—and it’s because a powerful man brought it up. He then goes on to muse, “it’s interesting, your father leaves without any answers, and you spend your life asking questions about men.” Later, when Carrie rejects the half-nude Julian in the accessories closet, Julian uses Carrie’s “daddy issues,” to try to persuade her into sex. He tells her, “Cookie, as someone who really cares about you, I think you have some serious issues with men… an older man can help you work through some of issues, Cookie.” Oh my god.
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Yet Julian’s behavior wasn’t the only trope familiar to me in this story. How Carrie presumably reacted was also part of a too-common narrative. After the incident, she ended up working with Enid—who we were made to dislike at the outset—and never reported Julian. She just shook it off. And since these incidents never happen in isolation, and typically indicate a larger pattern of abuse, it’s safe to assume Julian went on to harass more junior fashion editors and fledgling writers.
However, what struck me the most, is that despite having access to Carrie’s internal narrative—we never get to hear how she truly feels about the incident. She doesn’t tells the girls about it over brunch, and the episode’s final monologue is a speech about how you’ll never have the perfect boss, or parent. There’s no mention of the Versaces, not a Cookie pun, or even a reference to whether or not she got to keep the mary janes. Because for Carrie, and for women for far too long, workplace harassment wasn’t something you could talk about. It was a dirty secret, something you had to grin and bare to get ahead. Think about it. Carrie chose to have a long and fruitful relationship with Vogue—even appearing in bridal couture in the mag’s pages during the Sex and the City movie. Would she have continued to work with the magazine if she had reported Julian? We’ll never know.
But now, 20 years after the premiere of Sex and the City, and nearly a year into the #MeToo movement, I’m reporting it for her.
Sarah Jessica Parker shattered dreams last week when she confirmed a third Sex and the City film isn’t happening. Why Carrie Bradshaw and the gang aren’t reuniting for one last hurrah—despite a “beautiful” and “funny” script existing—is still a mystery, but The Daily Mail was quick to point a finger at Kim Cattrall. And that’s not surprising, to be honest. For one, tabloids have been pitting Cattrall and the other SATC women against each other for years, and she’s been plagued with “diva” rumors since the show’s inception.
Cattrall shot down The Daily Mail’s report on Twitter September 29, writing, “Woke 2 a @MailOnline ?storm! The only ‘DEMAND’ I ever made was that I didn’t want to do a 3rd film….& that was back in 2016.”
And the actress reportedly doubles down on this comment in a new interview on Piers Morgan’s ITV series, Life Stories. Per The Daily Mail‘s report, Cattrall says the Sex and the City producers first reached out to her last December about making a third film, but her answer has always been the same: “a respectful, firm, ‘no.'”
“This isn’t about more money, this is not about more scenes, it’s not about any of those things. This is about a clear decision, an empowered decision in my life to end one chapter and start another. I’m 61. It’s now,” she said. Cattrall says she never indulged the idea of a third film or indicated any interest. When producers called, she simply—and politely—declined the opportunity.
She elaborated, “This is extenuating circumstances, and in the past I’ve felt, wow, especially with the fans, I don’t want to in any shape or form ruin an ideal of it, because it does stand for empowerment and it does stand for women sticking up for each other, but not always.”
Of course, this isn’t how the story played out last week. Parker’s original quote and Cattrall’s tweet were conflated to make it look like there was some beef between the two. And that’s probably what will happen with the comment Cattrall reportedly made to Morgan about Parker during their interview.
“This is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City and, specifically, Sarah Jessica Parker in that I think she could have been nicer,” Cattrall said before reiterating, “I really think she could have been nicer…. I don’t know what her issue is, I never have.”
It’s important to point out Cattrall’s quote is (likely) only in the context of how SATC3–gate played out in the media. It’s not indicative of Cattrall and Parker’s overall relationship; in fact, they’ve contested for years there’s no bad blood, and Cattrall even said in this interview that she and Parker have “genuine affection” for each other.
Cattrall seems to have affection for Samantha Jones too, which is why she’s totally on board with producers’ casting another actress in the role.
“I want them to make the movie, if that’s what they want to do,” she said. “It’s a great part. I played it past the finish line and then some, and I loved it, and another actress should play it. Maybe they could make it an African American Samantha Jones or a Hispanic Samantha Jones?” Unfortunately, Cattrall said she’ll “never” play Samantha again.
Which is ironic, given that she seemed to tease the idea of a SATC spin-off starring Samantha last November. When Wendy Williams talked about this rumor on her show, Cattrall tweeted, “I’m so unbelievably flattered & moved..Can’t WAIT 2 get back 2 the serious business of making u all laugh! Fingers x’d.” She said something similar to a fan who also asked about the spin-off.
Shrugs shoulders. Honestly, we’ll probably never know what really happened in this situation—and all these details just make it even more devastating that another movie isn’t coming. Maybe it’s for the best, though. The two Sex and the City movies, truthfully, don’t hold a candle to the actual series. Perhaps it’s wise to just leave this franchise alone.
This week we heard some disappointing news: Sex and the City 3 isn’t happening. That’s right, Sarah Jessica Parker herself confirmed the news on Thursday, saying she’s disappointed the movie franchise based on the iconic HBO series is done. And SPJ wasn’t the only core cast member to express sour feelings: Kristin Davis is also unhappy that there won’t be another film.
The actress posted an Instagram Friday with two side-by-side photos of her character Charlotte—one at her most vulnerable and one where she’s predictably polished.
“I love to look back at the pics from our LONG history of Sex and the City. I am incredibly lucky to have gotten to play Charlotte through all of her ups and downs ( epitomized in one of my favorite episodes here). It is true that we are not going to be able to make a 3rd film. I wish that we could have made the final chapter, on our own terms, to complete the stories of our characters. It is deeply frustrating not to able to share that chapter (beautifully written by MPK) with all of you. So we will just have our memories, but please know that all of the love and support for us through the years is felt by us and we are so grateful for all of you!SATC forever in our hearts ❤️?❤️?❤️?❤️?”
Both Davis and Parker mentioned that there is a script kicking around for the third movie, it’s just not being made. Of course, there could be dozens of reasons it’s not happening. One theory is that Kim Catrall, who played Samantha, made too many demands about the movie which halted production, but she’s come forward on Twitter saying she just didn’t want to make a third film, plain and simple.
Fans have been asking for another SATC movie since the second one premiered, either because they can’t get enough of Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda or they can’t stand that Carrie and Big ended up together and they want to see if it really lasts. Sadly, we won’t get to know what happens next, but we can seek solace in the fact that there are 94 original TV episodes and over six hours of film to relive.
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