Ever since AJLT was announced in early 2021—along with confirmation that Kim Cattrall, who played the self-confident sexpot, would not be reprising her role—theories abounded online about the possible whereabouts of the powerhouse publicist, with some speculating that she’d even be killed off, which producer Michael Patrick King vehemently denied. “What you know is that Kim Cattrall is not in it,” he told Emmy Magazine in November 2021. “You don’t know this: that Samantha is not.” He also put it plainly to The New York Times, “Nobody’s dead. Nobody.” (Erm… nobody?) In any case, now that the first two episodes of AJLT have dropped, we have a clear picture of how Samantha’s absence is explained. Here’s why Samantha isn’t in And Just Like That…
Why isn’t Samantha in And Just Like That?
(WARNING: AND JUST LIKE THAT… EPISODE 1 SPOILERS AHEAD!!) In the opening scene for And Just Like That, Bitsy Von Muffling (a minor character from SATC’s Season 5 finale episode, “I Love A Charade”) runs into Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) as they wait for a table at a restaurant and asks them where Samantha is. Charlotte informs Bitsy that Samantha is in London for work, though the way she words it makes it sound like Samatha’s dead: Charlotte initially tells Bitsy that Samantha “is no longer with us,” leading Bitsy to fret that Samantha died during the COVID-19 pandemic before the women clarify that she’s simply living across the pond. However, Carrie & Co.’s facial expressions make it clear that something is amiss. In the next scene, it’s revealed that Carrie and Samantha’s friendship ended when Carrie fired Samantha as her publicist; as Carrie puts it, “Because of what the book business is now, it just didn’t make sense for me to keep her on as a publicist. She said fine and then fired me as a friend.” She continued, “She stopped returning my calls… I know she was upset but I thought I was more to her than an ATM.” Carrie also suggests that Samantha relocated to London primarily to get away from her, while Miranda says that she and Charlotte aren’t in touch with her either. Miranda also muses, “You know, it is kind of like she’s dead… we never even talk about her.” All of this jibes with a November 2021 report from The Daily Mail that revealed Samantha would be in the U.K. for practical reasons. A source close to the series noted to the outlet, “Sending her to Los Angeles wasn’t an option as we’d done that in the first movie, so having her character based in London really was the perfect way to keep her alive and explain her absence. Viewers will learn that she is thriving in England even though she has fallen out with Carrie.” The insider also revealed that producers are hopeful that Cattrall may change her mind and come back for a potential second season of AJLT, though more episodes have yet to get the green light from HBO Max.
Why isn’t Kim Cattrall in And Just Like That?
While we didn’t know why Samantha wasn’t in the SATC reboot until it was officially explained in AJLT’s premiere, we do know why Cattrall didn’t want to be on the show this time around. Some of it comes down to cold, hard cash. Cattrall reportedly previously refused to appear in the first two Sex and the City movies unless and until she was paid on par with Parker, and she outright refused to do a third film at all. However, that wasn’t her only reasoning. She told Piers Morgan back in 2017 that her refusal to reprise the role of Samantha in And Just Like That and Sex and the City as a whole was a conscious choice, explaining that it was “an empowered decision in my life to end one chapter and start another”—and that she was never actually friends with her cast mates during her SATC tenure. Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker have since had a long, heavily documented feud offscreen that likely cemented her decision not to return to the franchise, with insiders alleging that the set was cliquey and that Parker, Nixon, and Davis left Cattrall out and behaved in a catty manner towards her. All three women denied the rumors, and other co-stars, including Mr. Big himself (Chris Noth) have defended Parker specifically in the press.
What is Kim Cattrall doing now?
Cattrall is still staying booked and busy, starring in two reboots of other hit shows: She’ll be in the Queer As Folkrevival, as well as Hulu’s upcoming How I Met Your Father (a How I Met Your Mother spinoff) starring Hilary Duff. Next, find out where Carrie is headed in the Sex and the City reboot with our gallery of And Just Like That filming locations!
