'It's a no from me.'
Kim Cattrall will not play Samantha Jones again.
In a recent interview with Mail Online, the 62-year-old actress emphatically stated that she will "never" return to her iconic Sex and the City role.
"It's a no from me," Cattrall said. "You learn lessons in life and my lesson is to do work with good people and try and make it fun."
Cattrall's comments are just the latest in a string of drama surrounding the HBO series and its movie counterparts. After the series ended in 2004, two sequel films premiered in 2008 and 2010, with a third installment in the works for years.
The third return to the SATC universe was thwarted, though, amid rumored drama from the cast, which largely centered around Cattrall. Back in January 2017, Cattrall told ET that she would not participate in a third movie, something she reiterated on Twitter later that year.
"I hate to be a spoilsport, but what would the next story be? Whether you liked it or not, the reality is, authentically -- there were not alternative facts here! -- there was backlash," Cattrall said. "The reality of what [a third movie] would be -- there's nothing concrete."
Despite Cattrall's statement that nothing "concrete" existed in regards to a third movie, a script has since been discussed on James Andrew Miller's Origins podcast. During one episode, Miller claimed Cattrall didn't wanted to participate in a third installment because the focus was largely supposed to be on Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw.
"People close to Kim believe that the script didn't have a lot to offer the character of Samantha," he said. "They point to the fact that it calls for [Carrie's husband] Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big's death than about the relationship between the four women."
In September 2017, The Daily Mail reported that it was Cattrall's "demands" that put a stop to the third film, claiming she insisted that Warner Bros. produce other movies she had in development before signing onto SATC 3. However, Cattrall wrote on Twitter that "the only 'DEMAND' I ever made was that I didn't want to do a third film."
At the time, Parker and Kristin Davis, another star of the franchise, expressed disappointment that a third movie wasn't happening, with both referring to a completed script that Parker called "beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, joyful, very relatable."
However, during an interview with Piers Morgan for ITV's Life Stories, Cattrall once again stuck by her claim that a script didn't exist and said that she and her co-stars had "never been friends."
"This is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City, specifically Sarah Jessica Parker in that I think she could have been nicer," she told Morgan. "I really think she could have been nicer. I don’t know what her issue is, I never have."
"The answer was always no and a respectful, firm, no," she continued, further denying that there were any contract negotiations. "I never asked for any money, I never asked for any projects, to be thought of as some kind of diva is absolutely ridiculous. 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."
Following Cattrall's comments, Parker denied that their was a feud between them in an interview with Vulture.
"I’d just like to remind everybody that there is no catfight," the Divorce star said. "I have never uttered an unkind, unsupportive, unfriendly word, so I would love to redefine it... I’ve always held Kim’s work in high regard and always appreciative of her contributions. If she chooses not to do the third movie, there’s not a lot I can do to change her mind and we must respect it. That’s the only thing I’ve ever said about it, you know?"
"... There is no catfight, there never has been a catfight," Parker added. "I’ve never fought with someone publicly in my life, nor would I. And I spent time with all of the women on the set. People need to recall that it wasn’t just two women on the set fighting, because that just never happened. We are enormously proud of what we got to do… We spent 10, 12 years of our life doing something that I really loved and I feel privileged to be part of and I don’t want this to eclipse it or change its experience for that audience that was so good to us for so long."
As for whether the role of Samantha Jones would ever be recast in order to have a third flick, SATC creator told ET in July 2018 that "it's nothing I've thought about right now seriously."
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