sex and the city and just like that samantha kim cattrall

‘Sex And The City’ Low-Key Dragged Kim Cattrall In The Reboot & Fans Are Furious

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Life truly imitated art in last night’s And Just Like That premiere, which is the highly anticipated reboot of Sex and the City.

First of all: this post contains several spoilers about the first two episodes of And Just Like That, so if you haven’t watched and plan to, you best be exiting this window ASAP.

The Sex and the City reboot has arrived, with three out of the fab four returning, with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon all reprising their roles, along with practically every other main character — except Kim Cattrall’s Samantha. Cattrall has had a fraught history with the series and her costars — especially Parker — as she pulled out of a third SATC movie, and later confirmed she would not be back for the TV reboot.

So how did the series address the elephant in the room? Lucky for fans, they put us out of our misery early into the premiere. When Bitsy asked about Samantha in one of the first scenes, Charlotte replies, “She’s no longer with us,” before thankfully clarifying that she’s not dead, she has moved to London. Oh… good!

When Carrie and Miranda were alone, they elaborated on what went wrong in their friendship. “It is kind of like she’s dead, Samantha, we never even talk about her,” Miranda began.

“What is there to say? I told her that because of, you know, what the book business is now, it just didn’t make sense for me to keep her on as a publicist,” Carrie told Miranda. “She said fine, and then fired me as a friend.”

Miranda interjected, “She didn’t fire you… You know Samantha — her pride got damaged,” adding that Samantha might have been “embarrassed” which explains the lack of communication.

Carrie said that she had left Samantha voicemails to talk through their issues, then went on to make a rather pointed comment about her former friend, saying that “I thought I was more to her than an ATM.” Yikes!

Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte have all reached out to Samantha but she has been unresponsive. “I always thought the four of us would be friends forever,” Carrie mused. In short: Samantha got fired by Carrie as her publicist so she then ghosted her three best friends and moved to London.

Fans are beyond offended that Samantha’s exit from the series was portrayed as some petty grudge about her losing Carrie as one her publicity clients. Viewers took to Twitter to say that the way Samantha’s absence has been explained on the reboot is inconsistent with the character we’ve known across six seasons and two movies.

Carrie’s comment about trying to mend her friendship with Samantha, but not getting the same energy back, feels like an obvious drag of Cattrall. After the death of her brother in 2018, Cattrall famously addressed Parker on Instagram, writing, “Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now.”

Along with this, Carrie claiming that money caused their friendship to end was another potential dig at Kim. According to the show’s executive producer, Michael Patrick King, Cattrall had issues in the past with salary disparity between herself and Parker, asking to be paid the same as the show’s lead.

In episode two, following Big’s death (yep! it’s all happening!) as the women attend his funeral, Samantha sends a bouquet of flowers — but she doesn’t call or text. Carrie thanks her via text, where we see a stream of messages from Carrie, yet she received no replies.

Fans are especially baffled that Samantha wouldn’t show up to Big’s funeral, given how much she valued her friendships in past seasons.

So far, Kim has not expressed any interest in rejoining the show for a potential second season and after how they wrote her character out of the reboot, I’m not sure if we will ever see her reprise her role in And Just Like That.

At this stage, the best we can hope for is a Samantha Jones spin-off as Sammy J takes on Europe. And you know what? I’d watch the hell out of that.

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New episodes of And Just Like That drop every Thursday night on Foxtel and Binge.