When putting together “AJLT,” Parker said that she and series writer-director Michael Patrick King didn’t invite Cattrall to join them and that she didn’t think she would want Cattrall on the show in any regard, “because I think there’s just too much public history of feelings on her part that she’s shared.” King said, “I have no realistic expectation of Kim Cattrall ever appearing again.”
Amid a discussion of covid in the first episode of “AJLT,” an acquaintance asks Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte where their fourth buddy is. Charlotte replies, “She’s not with us,” and then they quickly have to explain that Samantha didn’t die. She just moved to London.
Walking home, though, Miranda gently brings the subject back up with Carrie: “It’s kind of like she’s dead, Samantha. We never talk about her.”
The ridiculous explanation for her absence is that the Samantha cut Carrie off when the author told the power publicist she no longer needed her services, the book business being what it is. “She said ‘fine’ and then fired me as a friend,” says Carrie. Unreturned phone calls, unanswered texts. A move to London for work without a word. Her pride was damaged, Miranda posits. “Look, I understand that she was upset, but I thought I was more to her than an ATM,” says Carrie, adding, “I always thought the four of us would be friends forever.”
Over the first season, Samantha pops up from time to time. She sends a gorgeous vignette of white orchids when Carrie’s husband, Big (Chris Noth), dies suddenly of a heart attack, which Carrie accepts despite insisting that the funeral have no flowers. Carrie talks on her podcast about how a friend once fished her diaphragm out of her vagina when it got stuck, and then texts Samantha to give her a heads-up. “One of my finest hours,” she writes back. Slowly, slowly the thaw begins. By the end of the season, they talk on the phone, but we never hear it.
As Cattrall told “Today,” she shot her scene in August from noon to 4, and then she and her partner went home and had dry martinis. Very Samantha.
Her appearance also coincides with “Sex and the City’s” 25th anniversary. “It felt like dipping my toe back in time and having a wonderful afternoon and then a great martini,” Cattrall told “Today.”
Did she want to dip her toe farther? Not a chance, said Cattrall. “That’s as far as I’m going to go.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/08/24/samantha-return-just-like-that-explained/