Spoilers for And Just Like That below.
The Sex and the City revival, And Just Like That, wastes no time explaining why the fan-favorite Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is missing from
the show’s new chapter. Within the first few minutes of episode one, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) openly discuss why the fourth member of their quartet is missing in action. The short answer? She moved to London for work. But the backstory is a little more fraught and complicated than that.
It turns out, the group lost touch with Samantha. (“We never even talk about her,” Miranda says on a walk with Carrie.) And the falling out stemmed from Carrie removing Samantha as her publicist, which the latter didn’t take lightly. “I told her that because of what the book business is now, it didn’t make sense for me to keep her on as a publicist,” Carrie explains. “She said fine and then fired me as a friend.”
Carrie adds that Samantha stopped returning her calls and wouldn’t answer her voicemails. Miranda and Charlotte haven’t spoken to her either. “We texted and called but we never heard back,” Miranda says.
Carrie laments, “I understand that she was upset, but I thought that I was more to her than an ATM.”
Miranda tries to empathize, saying Samantha’s “pride got damaged” and that she was “embarrassed.” But Carrie asks, “So embarrassed she took a job and moved to London?”
At the end of their stroll, the Miranda and Carrie accept that they’ve done what they can to reconnect with their friend. “Then I guess that’s all we can do. [It’s] so weird,” Miranda says.
“I know,” Carrie agrees. “I always thought the four of us would be friends forever.”
Speculation about Samantha’s whereabouts have long been swirling since And Just Like That was confirmed in January without Kim Cattrall in the cast. Parker even played along with fans who were theorizing why Samantha wouldn’t return. The guesses were “exceeding all expectations,” she teased on Twitter, though she remained mum on the actual answer.
How close was your guess?
Exceeding all expectations. I am summoning discipline though desperate to suggest "hot/cold"
— Sarah Jessica Parker (@SJP) January 11, 2021
Though SATC viewers are missing Samantha, Cattrall has been adamant about leaving the character behind. She told The Guardian in 2019, “I went pastthe finish line playing Samantha Jones because I loved Sex and the City. 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.”
The first two episodes of And Just Like That are now streaming on HBO Max. The eight remaining installments will drop weekly on Thursdays.