Sarah Jessica Parker is done with the “catfight” rumors and wants to set the record straight on her relationship with former co-star Kim Cattrall.
Parker says Cattrall’s portrayal of witty and ever-horny publicist Samantha was key to the success of Sex and the City, which ran on HBO for six seasons and netted multiple Emmy awards.
“She was a huge contributor to the success, I think, you know?” Parker told The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast on Wednesday.
Calling the situation “very painful,” Parker promised to “kind of run through how it happened” to put the hearsay to rest once and for all.
The And Just Like That… actress and executive producer says she didn’t ask Cattrall to be part of the SATC sequel because of her previous comments, including accusations of bullying and assertions that she and the rest of the cast had “never been friends.”
“That’s not ‘slamming’ her, it’s just learning,” Parker said. “You’ve got to listen to somebody, and if they’re publicly talking about something and it doesn’t suggest it’s some place they want to be, or a person they want to play, or an environment in which they want to be, you get to an age where you’re like, ‘Well, we hear that.’”
SJP also alleged that Warner Bros. shelved a third Sex and the City movie due to Cattrall’s demands.
A 2017 Daily Mail article suggested that Cattrall asked the studio to produce other films for her as part of her contract, prompting Cattrall to tweet: “The only ‘DEMAND’ I ever made was that I didn’t want to do a 3rd film....& that was back in 2016.”)
On Wednesday, Parker pushed back on Cattrall’s story: “They didn’t feel comfortable meeting where she wanted to meet, and so we didn’t do the movie because we didn’t want to do it without Kim, and the studio wasn’t going to do it, so it fell apart. It wasn’t that she said ‘no’ to the movie; it’s that the studio said ‘no’ to the movie, which, you know, happens.”
Despite everything, Parker says there’s no beef between the two, whose chemistry as best friends was sorely missed by fans in the new series.
“It’s so painful for people to keep talking about this ‘catfight’—a fight, a fight, a fight. I’ve never uttered fighting words in my life about anybody that I’ve worked with ever,” she added.
“That is not the way I would have it. So I just wish that they would stop calling this a ‘catfight’ or an ‘argument,’ because it doesn’t reflect [reality]. There has been one person talking.”
Rumors about on-set tension and compensation disputes have been swirling since the show ended in 2004, but Cattrall was the first to publicly discuss her issues with Parker and co-stars Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis.
“Are we the best of friends? No. We’re professional actresses. We have our own separate lives,” Cattrall said in 2008, according to Elle.
Almost a decade later, Cattrall stood by her statement in an interview with Piers Morgan, adding that Parker “could have been nicer.”
“I don’t know what her issue is,” Cattrall said.
The most abrasive put-down came in 2018, after Parker sent her condolences following the death of Cattrall’s brother.
In a public message on Instagram, Cattrall responded: “Let me make this VERY clear. (If I haven’t already) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.”
In 2019, Cattrall changed her tune slightly, calling SATC a “blessing” but insisting that she was done with the franchise.
“I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself. I want to choose who I spend time with personally and professionally. It’s my life,” she told The Guardian.
All throughout, Parker insisted that she thought of Cattrall as a friend during filming.
Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in And Just Like That...
HBO MaxDuring a 2016 interview with Howard Stern, she conceded that not every day was “perfect,” but that the cast and crew were “a family of people who needed each other, relied upon each other and loved each other.”
And after Cattrall’s Instagram remarks, SJP told Bravo host Andy Cohen that she was “just heartbroken.”
Journalist James Andrew Miller explored the beginnings of the Cattrall-Parker saga in his 2021 book, Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.
In the book, Sex and the City producer John Melfi said it all came down to “generational differences.”
Former HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht contested that Cattrall’s complaints over her pay also played a part in the rumored feud.
“What happened was it became Mean Girls and whatever Kim did or didn’t do, the result was she was ostracized,” Albrecht said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t justified, but it gets tricky when you have an actor who is also a producer. As an executive producer, SJ should have figured out how to not let that happen. But as an actress, she ended up letting it happen.”
