The Real Story Behind Kim Cattrall And Sarah Jessica Parker’s Feud
It’s become no secret that there was no love lost between Sex and the City co-stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall on the set of the beloved show, so much so that all these years later it is still making headlines.
Cattrall, who played Samantha Jones in the hit franchise caused a stir for famously blocking the third SATC movie from going ahead – before going on to publicly call out SJP for her “cruel” behaviour and for trying to portray a “nice girl” image.
Now, the man behind the hit show, writer and executive producer Michael Patrick King has spoken out about the feud, revealing the pair had a rocky relationship right from the beginning.
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“The show doesn’t exist if Sarah Jessica wasn’t the blonde star of the show, that’s number one,” King told The Hollywood Reporter’s Origins podcast. “Kim was not at the height of her career, Kristin was under her in terms of notability, Cynthia was a theatre actor — and their contracts reflected that status,” he said.
“As the show progressed, the characters, everybody grew, it became a family. Kristin, Cynthia and Sarah Jessica became one group, and Kim never joined mentally.
“Kim fought and said, ‘I’m everyone’s favourite.’ … (Parker’s) name was contractually, legally, righteously, the only name on the poster due to the fact that she was a movie star in 1998 when the series started and she did a leap to do a show about sex on (HBO), the channel that did the fights, and it doesn’t matter how popular you are.
“I guess for Kim it didn’t matter how much the raise became if there was never parity, but there was never going to be parity.”
King went on to criticise Cattrall for how she portrayed her time working on the show.
“People do things, they make stuff up based on what they want to tell themselves,” he added.
“All I know is that show was spectacular for everyone involved. It was a spectacular success and you have to work very hard to make that Sex and the City story be something that was not good for you, and for some reason, Kim thinks something happened to her on that show that was not good for her.”
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Last month, also speaking with THR’s Origins podcast, SJP denied that there was any “catfight” going on and says she feels no ill will.
"I'm not in a catfight with anybody. I've never publicly — ever — said anything unfriendly, unappreciative about Kim because that's not how I feel about her." She also denied that she and Cattrall had tension on set, adding, "We just couldn't have functioned. I would've had stomach aches every day."
The feud between the pair, who starred alongside each other in the hit HBO series for six seasons from 1998 to 2004 as well as two films in 2008 and 2010 first came to light when Cattrall said Parker “could have been nicer” during an interview in October 2017 with Piers Morgan when discussing why the third SATC movie fell through.
It then reached fever-pitch in February this year when Cattrall called out Parker for reaching out via social media after the death of her brother.
“Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now,” Cattrall wrote in an Instagram post directed to her former co-star. “Let me make this VERY clear. (If I haven’t already) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.”
A source at the time told US Weekly that SJP reaching out publicly rather than contacting her privately “struck a nerve”.
“There’s no love lost. When you haven’t talked to someone in eight years, a public comment on Instagram isn’t the most personal,” said the source. “SJP could have reached out via personal channels. It could have been genuine but it didn’t need to be a spectacle. Doing it on social media struck a nerve with Kim because SJP knows how to reach her privately.”
