All across Manhattan, people were asking the same thing: Why won’t there be a third Sex and the City movie?
The whole thing got started thanks to an interview New York’s hottest actress, Sarah Jessica Parker, gave to Extra, a syndicated talk show that’s played in diners. Parker could not have been starker about the prospects for a threequel. “It’s over,†she said. “We’re not doing it.â€
She wasn’t the only one trying for a trilogy: The rest of the cast and crew had been ready to get started on the third installment. “We had this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, joyful, very relatable script and story,†Parker said. But as any single woman could tell you, sometimes things just fizzle out before you can see if the sparks will truly fly.
I couldn’t help but wonder: Is it better for a series to die before its time, or to keep going long after it should have passed? Are we currently suffering under a plague of zombie franchises, or are we the zombies, living in a franchise of our own cynicism?
The question hit me last week, when an infamous British tabloid reported that the third Sex movie had in fact been “torpedoed†by the “outrageous demands†of Kim Cattrall. According to the Brits, Cattrall refused to sign onto the film until Warner Bros. agreed to green-light movies she was producing. No side projects, no Samantha.
Meanwhile, this reboot was hitting Cattrall where the sun don’t shine. On Twitter, the actress used 140 characters to say that she was through with her most famous one.
For the rest of the cast, the news of no sequel struck them as profoundly unequal.
But Cattrall would not be budged: She was not tri-sexual, or even tri-curious. “Me playing [Samantha], that I can assure you will never happen,†she told media bad boy Piers Morgan, adding: “This isn’t about more money, this is not about more scenes, it’s not about any of those things. This is about a clear decision, an empowered decision in my life to end one chapter and start another. I’m 61. It’s now.â€
Still, she wished her former co-stars had been more understanding about her low Sex drive: “I just wish that Sarah had been nicer,†Cattrall told Morgan. Even people in the movie biz know how to take “No†for an answer, she said, but “that’s not what happened here … it feels like a toxic relationship.â€
It wasn’t long before a little bird told Cattrall’s co-stars all about her comments. And if you can’t get sweet revenge, why not get tweet revenge?
But Cattrall was undeterred. You’ve got to figure this social-media maven knew that here, her retweet was definitely considered an endorsement.
And though People reported that Cattrall had spent summer in the City negotiations, she told a fan that she simply wasn’t feeling the joy of Sex:
A wise woman once said, the most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them and others you don’t, but in the end, they’re the people you always come home to.
But you wanna know another thing she said?
Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe you have to let go of who you were … to become who you will be.