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- Kim Cattrall reportedly liked a fan’s comment on her Instagram post about her Sex and the City character, Samantha Jones, being the one “who carried the entire franchise”
- This came days after the beloved show’s spinoff, And Just Like That…, came to a close with a finale that garnered massive backlash from viewers
- Cattrall did not return for the revival, which first aired in 2021, although she made a brief cameo in season 2
Kim Cattrall is subtly weighing in on the debate over Sex and the City’s controversial spinoff.
The actress marked her 69th birthday on Thursday, Aug. 21, just one week after And Just Like That… concluded its three-season revival series. While Cattrall did not participate in the offshoot, she seemingly reacted to fan frustration over the way the finale episode played out.
According to a screenshot obtained by Page Six, Cattrall liked a fan comment shading the show on her Instagram post celebrating another year around the sun.
“And Just Like that…we all know is was Sam (Kim) who carried the entire franchise,” the comment read. “You, embodied everything that is the essence of a strong, powerful, and vulnerable woman. 🍸we love and respect you.”
In the original Sex and the City series, which ran from 1998 until 2004, Cattrall played the outspoken, independent, sex-positive Samantha Jones.
While she later returned for the two feature films in 2008 and 2010, she did not come back for the reboot in 2021. Her absence was explained in the season 1 premiere, when it was revealed that she moved to London after a falling out with best friend Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker).
It was teased in that season’s finale that the two got drinks when Carrie was in Paris, and Cattrall even made a brief appearance calling from the car on her way to the airport in season 2. Samantha only returned one more time in the form of a text message in season 3.
In 2022, she told Variety that she was “never asked to be part of the reboot.”
“I made my feelings clear after the possible third movie, so I found out about it like everyone else did — on social media,” Cattrall said at the time.
And Just Like That… came to an end on Thursday, Aug. 14.
The finale garnered major backlash from viewers after it didn’t include any scenes with all three main stars — Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes) and Kristin Davis (Charlotte York Goldenblatt) — together.
Writer Julie Rottenberg defended the episode during an interview with TVLine.
She said the friendship between the ladies is “stronger than anything,” and the message is that “they’re there even when they’re not there.”
“I think the idea is the whole series is based on the strength of those friendships,” she told the outlet. “So even if you’re not in the same room… we have those bonds, and we feel the support and strength of those friendships.”
“I think it speaks to the fact that no one wants to say goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw,” Rottenberg continued.
Rottenberg also joked that she would “have been worried if there weren’t a cacophony of responses to the fact that this was the end.”
She noted that the writers and producers know they “can’t please all the people all of the time.”
Another writer, Elisa Zuritsky, explained that the final scene being Carrie dancing through the hallways of her Gramercy Park apartment as a single woman “definitely rings the most true” out “of all the possible endings” they could have had.
“I think it’s sort of extra poignant and feels authentic to [Carrie’s] character that she would reach this moment,” she said. “She’s gone back, in a real way, to relationship-land. She’s decided that she’d rather be on her own than in a not-ideal partnership.”
“I feel really gratified that that’s the grace note for now, that she feels really full, and fully realized, and like a happy person living a happy life and a grateful person in the world that she created for herself,” she added. “It feels ultimately gratifying, and I can’t say we’ve seen a ton of that in movies and television. So I feel like it’s kind of a beautiful punctuation mark to a life well lived.”
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Sex and the City, as well as its two feature films, and And Just Like That… are all streaming on HBO Max.
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