HBO Boss Teases How Samantha Will Be Written Out of ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot: ‘Friendships Fade’
Nearly 17 years since the show ended on HBO, “Sex and the City” is coming back in the form of a reboot titled “And Just Like That,” named for one of columnist Carrie Bradshaw’s classic quips. While the series will pick up back in New York City with The Girls now in their 50s, one key element missing will be Kim Cattrall, who starred as the outspoken and sex-positive Samantha Jones. The actress has long been vocal about never wanting to return to Darren Star’s beloved franchise, which also spawned two movies, and so now the new version headed to HBO Max has to get creative about how it will explain the fan-favorite character’s absence.
HBO and HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys offered some insight into how that will happen in a recent interview with TV Line. “They’re not trying to say that these characters are reliving their 30s,” Bloys said of the forthcoming series, which recently assembled an ace writing team as production hopes to get started later this year. “It is very much a story about women in their 50s, and they are dealing with things that people deal with in their 50s.”
Bloys added, “Just as in real life, people come into your life, people leave. Friendships fade, and new friendships start. So I think it is all very indicative of the real stages, the actual stages of life… They’re trying to tell an honest story about being a woman in her 50s in New York. So it should all feel somewhat organic, and the friends that you have when you’re 30, you may not have when you’re 50.”
Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristen Davis will all be returning to the reboot as Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte, and they’re joined by writer Michael Patrick King as well as scribes from “Shrill,” “Fresh Off the Boat,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “Tuca & Bertie.”
Boys said that Parker and King “didn’t want to tell a story with all-white writers or an all-white cast… It’s not reflective of New York. So they are being very, very conscious about understanding that New York has to reflect the way New York looks today.”
“I went past the finish line playing Samantha Jones because I loved ‘Sex and the City’,” Cattrall told The Guardian in 2019. “It was a blessing in so many ways but after the second movie I’d had enough.” She put it even more bluntly back in 2017 when speaking to Piers Morgan over a rumored feud between Cattrall and her co-stars. “The answer was simply, ‘Thank you, but no, I’m good,’” she said in regards to calls about doing a third movie.
