Well, “Sex And The City” fans, hell has frozen over. Variety reports that Kim Cattrall will reprise her role as publicist Samantha Jones in the upcoming season of “And Just Like That…” But there are a couple of caveats to Cattrall’s return: she appears in only one scene, an over-the-phone convo with series star Sarah Jessica Parker.
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Variety says that Cattrall shot her dialogue for the scene in New York City on March 22 without seeing Parker or the other stars of the show. The actress also didn’t meet up with showrunner Michael Patrick King. So while Jones will finally show up in the “Sex And The City” sequel series, it’s a short-lived reunion and not in the flesh. But Patricia Field, the esteemed costume designer for the original HBO show, dressed Cattrall for her scene, so there’s that.
Cattrall’s reappearance as Jones shouldn’t come as a total surprise to fans of the series. In the previous season of “And Just Like That…” Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw and Jones texted briefly in one episode, and in the finale, they agree to make plans to see each other and potentially reconcile. In the series, Jones now lives in London instead of NYC, an effective way of writing Cattrall out of the show after she refused to return for the sequel series.
After six seasons and two movies of “Sex And The City,” Cattrall announced in 2016 that she was finished with Samantha Jones as a character. How come? At the time, she didn’t feel like the script she saw for a third film did justice to Jones. “I would have preferred for all of us to have some kind of event to warrant a third film,” Cattrall told Variety last year. “That didn’t happen.”
Cattrall’s decision not to return as Samantha led to a public fallout between her and Parker. Parker and King didn’t approach Cattrall to return when they rebooted the series with “And Just Like That…” for HBO Max in 2021, although Cynthia Nixon‘s Miranda and Kristen Davis‘ Charlotte did return. And while “Sex And The City” fans welcomed the new series, critics met it with mixed reviews.
Last year, Parker and King both said that they didn’t think Cattrall would ever return to play Samantha again. But chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Casey Bloys had other ideas. He approached Cattrall about a potential return when “And Just Like That…” started shooting its second season in NYC this past winter, and the actress agreed, albeit for a brief cameo.
But however brief Cattrall’s return is, will it lead to her being onscreen with Parker, Nixon and Davis again for a real, in-person reunion someday? That’s up to a lot of things, most importantly how well “And Just Like That…” Season 2 does with critics and audiences when it premieres on Max on June 22. And bear in mind that Samantha’s scene in the upcoming season will air in August. So if Cattrall indeed returns for even more “Sex And The City,” fans won’t get confirmation until after the summer ends.