Last week Kim Cattrall made the daytime talk show rounds to discuss her return to our TV screens in the role of a polished, successful New Yorker with a lifestyle and closet every fashionista covets. Oh, and she also mentioned her upcoming cameo in "And Just Like That…"
We should clarify what we mean. Cattrall is currently co-starring in "Glamorous," a CW castoff snapped up by Netflix in which she plays cosmetics mogul and former model Madolyn Addison. Promoting "Glamorous" is the reason she made the daytime talk show rounds.
But Cattrall isn't dumb – she knows what everyone really wants to talk about is her pop into the second season finale of Carrie Bradshaw's hot flash chronicles.
This pleasant shock follows years' worth of reports detailing the feud between Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker, in addition to contradicting Cattrall's previous on-the-record indications that she was done with the franchise.
"I went past the finish line playing Samantha Jones because I loved 'Sex and the City,'" she said in a 2019 article in The Guardian. "It was a blessing in so many ways but after the second movie I'd had enough. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't just replace me with another actress instead of wasting time bullying. No means no."
Four years later . . . "It's very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO asking, 'What can we do?'" she told the ladies of "The View" on Wednesday. "And I went, Hmmm . . . let me get creative."
Somebody should.
Look, the public may never know the real story of how things went down behind the scenes on "Sex and the City," which ran on HBO between 1998 and 2004 and spawned two feature films.
At least HBO chief Casey Bloys understands what "And Just Like That" creator Michael Patrick King and Parker have failed to work around, which is that the audience will only buy Samantha's physical absence to a point. This is especially true since "Glamorous" dropped. The show remains perched in Netflix's Top 10 despite not being very good, but also perhaps because it carries no expectations or history.
So why not dispense with the proof-of-life snippets and give Cattrall a spinoff instead of letting other studios profit from what is essentially a designer imposter?
This may offend "Glamorous" viewers who either are or have grown fond of Miss Benny, who plays that show's charming 22-year-old makeup influencer Marco Mejia, Madolyn's protégé. Marco is the show's primary focus while Cattrall is the exacting if kindly matriarch of a boss.
Cattrall is also its biggest name in a cast of relative unknowns, and Madolyn bears enough of a resemblance to Samantha for us to fantasize that Manhattan's queer kingdom put her in witness protection with a new identity. Why not? That's basically what Netflix invited the audience to do by premiering it on the same day as "And Just Like That." Talk about shade.
Still, the weightless writing does not rise to Cattrall's full ability or Samantha's character potential.
If "Sex and the City" is in the same category as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" for the way it depicts independent women and their friends, imagine if Samantha were given the "Lou Grant" treatment. As Ed Asner's ursine editor found himself back in the day, Samantha is a fox in an unfamiliar den, starting over in a new city and new culture with different rules and feelings about Americans.
Samantha also represents something Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte don't – she's a woman in her mid-60s starting over in another part of the world, on her own, which isn't unique but is certainly unusual. (Cattrall is 66.) She's in a fantastic situation that could also be aspirational, an energy "And Just Like That" hasn't plugged into.
Carrie has a few "big sister" figures in her life, but they are functionally part of her resource collection as opposed to confidantes. "And Just Like That" writes these women as pushy, clueless jokes or simply unpleasant, as if pushing Carrie's fear of aging closer to the graveyard instead of showing off that cohort's vitality.
A smartly rendered show focusing on Samantha could correct that view, and in the same way it could vivaciously trade in wicked farce that reminds us of why she's the character everyone wants to be. People may want Carrie's bank account and closet or a marriage like Charlotte's but as for the rest, New York can keep it.
One can see the potential in Madolyn's narrative subdivision of "Glamorous," where the tone cuts straighter than the rest of the show. You can tell Cattrall is having fun, and you can see she's adding value. She reminds us of what we've been missing about the "City" sequel, and she knows it.
"I don't think I'll ever say goodbye to Samantha," she told "Today" hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager. "She's like a lot of other characters that I've done over the years. I get very emotionally attached and protective of my characters. She gave me so much, and I'm so appreciative of her."
Cattrall says her work on the cameo "felt like dipping my toe back in time and having a wonderful afternoon, and then a great martini."
When Bush Hager inquired whether Cattrall would ever consider another group swim, she swiftly reined in that hope: "That's as far as I'm gonna go." Maybe she would answer differently if Samantha were given her own pool. Who wouldn't want to jump in with her?
"Glamorous" is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes of "And Just Like That..." premiere Thursdays on Max.
