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Mar 30, 2024

Timeline of Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall's Reported Feud

They may have been each other's soulmates on-screen, but Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker have reportedly had a tumultuous relationship through the years. From 1998 until 2004, Parker and

They may have been each other's soulmates on-screen, but Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker have reportedly had a tumultuous relationship through the years.

From 1998 until 2004, Parker and Cattrall starred alongside Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis in "Sex and the City," playing four best friends navigating New York City's dating world. The show spanned six seasons and went on to inspire two movies, "Sex and the City" and "Sex and the City 2," and a reboot, "And Just Like That..." The show's second-season finale aired on August 24, and included a cameo from Cattrall who has otherwise been absent from the series.

However, there has long been speculation of a rift between Parker and Cattrall, and in February 2018 Cattrall took shots at Parker on Instagram, calling out what she said was her "'nice girl' persona."

Here's a timeline of the reported feud between "Sex and the City" costars.

Prior to the premiere of "Sex and the City," Cattrall was a prolific working actress well known for her starring role in "Mannequin." Parker was also a working actress with a Broadway background.

"Sex and the City" won seven Emmys over the course of its six seasons, with both Parker and Nixon winning individual awards for their performances. Cattrall was nominated five times for best supporting actress but never won the award.

On "Friday Night With Jonathan Ross," Cattrall said that part of the reason why the show ended and a potential movie was put on pause was because of financial reasons.

"I felt after six years it was time for all of us to participate in the financial windfall of 'Sex and the City,'" she told Ross, Digital Spy reported in December 2004. "When they didn't seem keen on that I thought it was time to move on."

However, Cattrall dispelled rumors that she would never play Samantha Jones again, saying that "if the deal was right and the script was fabulous," she "absolutely" would return.

In an "exclusive on-set report" published by The Telegraph, sources claimed there had long been tension between Cattrall and her castmates over their respective salaries.

According to the report, Parker was given the role of executive producer before the second season, which bumped her salary up to $300,000 — higher than her three costars' salaries.

The Telegraph reported that Cattrall attempted to negotiate her salary, which reportedly created a rift between her and her castmates.

The report also cited the 2004 Emmys, where Parker, Nixon, and Davis all sat together while Cattrall sat by herself, as a potential indication of alliances within the cast.

"Are we the best of friends? No. We're professional actresses. We have our own separate lives," Cattrall responded when asked about the seating arrangement at the award show.

However, in the same Telegraph report, Parker claimed she was friends with Cattrall.

"Honestly, we are all friends, and I wish I saw more of Kim," she said. "She mentioned money, and no one should vilify her for it. People made a decision that we had vilified her."

The actresses were seen posing together on the red carpet as they promoted the movie in May 2008.

In an interview with Marie Claire in June 2008, Cattrall explained one reason why it took four years after the end of "Sex and the City" for the movie to come out.

"Four years ago, I was going through a painful public divorce, the series was coming to an end, and my father was diagnosed with dementia," she said. "I felt it was time to be with my real family."

She continued, "A year and a half ago, when I was sent the script, I was ready and strong enough to revisit Samantha. In some ways, I'm glad we waited. The script and the experience of making the movie was the best possible reunion."

"I don't think anybody wants to believe that I love Kim. I adore her. I wouldn't have done the movie without her. Didn't and wouldn't," Parker told Elle when asked about reports of friction between Cattrall and the other cast members.

In an interview with the Daily Mail in January 2010, Cattrall responded directly to Parker's comments in Elle about no one wanting to believe the two actresses got along.

"I think Sarah was right: people don't want to believe that we get on," she told the Daily Mail. "They have too much invested in the idea of two strong, successful women fighting with each other. It makes for juicy gossip and copy. The truth of us being friends and getting along and happily doing our jobs together is nowhere near as newsworthy."

"I think Sarah is fantastic. She is a born leader and she guides the crew and the cast in such a strong but gentle way," she continued. "She and I are sick of this. It's exhausting talking about it, and a real bore."

In an interview with Time, Parker described how she pushed back against rumors that she was feuding with her "Sex and the City" costar.

"You answer when they're deserving and worthy of an answer, and the rest you let go, and let your reputation speak for itself," she told the magazine in September 2016.

"It was always so heartbreaking to me that there was this narrative about Kim [Cattrall] and myself because it just didn't reflect anything that happened on that set," she continued. "They just didn't do it to the 'Sopranos' guys."

Parker went on to describe the narrative that she and Cattrall didn't get along as "strange to me and upsetting."

"I posted something on Kim's birthday and people were like 'Oh my God, I didn't know you liked her!' What? We were all at liberty to walk away at any time," she continued. "But nobody asked those questions of shows with men. Isn't that interesting?"

The Daily Mail reported in 2017 that filming of the third movie had been set to start, but claimed those plans had been canceled due to "Cattrall's outrageous demands."

Cattrall responded to the report, tweeting that her only "demand" was not to do the movie, claiming she turned down doing a third film in 2016.

Parker confirmed to Extra TV that the third movie, which had already been written, had been scrapped.

"It's over… we're not doing it," she told a reporter outside the New York City Ballet Gala. "I'm disappointed. We had this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, joyful, very relatable script and story. It's not just disappointing that we don't get to tell the story and have that experience, but more so for that audience that has been so vocal in wanting another movie."

Cattrall appeared on ITV, the BBC reported, to discuss why the third "Sex and the City" movie never came to be, claiming that her choice not to return was "an empowered decision in my life to end one chapter and start another" and that she resented being portrayed in the media as "demanding or a diva."

"This is really where I take to task the people from 'Sex and the City,' and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker," she told Morgan. "I think she could've been nicer. I really think she could've been nicer. I don't know what her issue is."

"The thing that still bothers me is this feeling of being in some way made to be the baddie," she continued. "I never asked for any money, I never asked for any projects, to be thought of as some kind of diva is absolutely ridiculous."

As for her personal relationships with her three costars, Cattrall claimed that had "never been friends."

"We've been colleagues and in some ways, it's a very healthy place to be because then you have a clear line between your professional life and relationship and your personal," she said.

A few months after Cattrall's appearance on ITV, Parker spoke about the comments in an interview with Andy Cohen on an episode of "Watch What Happens Live," saying she was "heartbroken" that Cattrall said they had "never been friends."

"I found it very upsetting because that's not the way I recall our experience, so it's sad, but I'm kind of — I always think that what ties us together is this singular experience," Parker told Cohen. "It was a professional experience, but it became personal because it was years and years of our lives, so I'm hoping that that sort of eclipses anything that's been recently spoken."

"It is with great sadness that myself and my family announce the unexpected passing of our son and brother, Chris Cattrall," Kim Cattrall posted on Twitter on February 4. He had been missing for five days before CNN reported that he had been found dead by police.

Cattrall later confirmed her brother had died by suicide and thanked her "friends, family, and #Sexandthecity colleagues" for their support.

However, in a second Instagram post, Cattrall addressed Parker directly, telling her she did not "need [her] love and support at this tragic time."

"My Mom asked me today 'When will that @sarahjessicaparker, that hypocrite, leave you alone?' Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now," Cattrall wrote in the February 10 post.

"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."

King also appeared to confirm that the stars' salaries were different from the very start of the show.

"The show doesn't exist if Sarah Jessica wasn't the blonde star of the show," King said during a 2018 episode of the "Origins" podcast, titled "Sex and the City: 1, 2 & Out."

"Kim was not at the height of her career, Kristin was under her in terms of notability, Cynthia was a theater actress — and their contracts reflected that status," he continued.

"Kim fought and said, 'I'm everyone's favorite,'" he said. "[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."

"I 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," she told Variety. "The series is basically the third movie. That's how creative it was."

She also confirmed rumors over a third-movie storyline involving Miranda's teenage son, Brady, sending Samantha unsolicited lewd photos, which she called "heartbreaking," and hinted that she was unsatisfied with Samantha's character development in the script that she was given.

"Everything has to grow, or it dies. I felt that when the series ended, I thought that's smart," she said. "We're not repeating ourselves. And then the movie to end all the loose ends. And then there's another movie. And then there's another movie? Everything in me went, 'I'm done.'"

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg on the "Awards Chatter" podcast, Parker said she "spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody" who worked on "Sex and the City," "and there just isn't anyone else who's ever talked about me this way."

Parker added that Cattrall was not asked to be a part of "And Just Like That" because Cattrall "made it clear that that wasn't something she wanted to pursue, and it no longer felt comfortable for us, and so it didn't occur to us."

"It's so painful for people to keep talking about this 'catfight' — a 'fight,' a 'fight,' a 'fight.' I've never uttered fighting words in my life about anybody that I've worked with — ever. There is not a 'fight' going on," she continued. "There has been no public dispute or spat or conversations or allegations made by me or anybody on my behalf. I wouldn't do it. That is not the way I would have it. So I just wish that they would stop calling this a 'catfight' or an 'argument,' because it doesn't reflect [reality]. There has been one person talking."

On May 31, Variety reported that Cattrall had filmed one scene for the upcoming second season. In the brief scene, Samantha has a phone conversation with Carrie. Cattrall and Parker never actually interacted with each other on-set to film the scene.

"It's very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO saying, 'What can we do?' and I went, 'Hmm, Let me get creative,'" Cattrall said on an episode of "The View" in June. "And one of those things was to get ['Sex and the City' costume designer] Pat Field back because I just thought that if I'm going to come back, I gotta come back with that Samantha style. I gotta push it. And we did."

In the scene, Samantha has a short phone conversation with Parker's character Carrie leading up to Carrie's "last supper" in her apartment.

Cattrall then blows a kiss into her phone and holds it to her heart, which showrunner Michael Patrick King says was improvised by the actress.

"It's just totally a moment of an actor playing a moment," King said on the show's "And Just Like That… The Writers Room Podcast." "And it's really nice."

Parker also praised the inclusion of Samantha in the finale episode of "And Just Like That," which has been renewed for a third season.

"It's a little exchange that is happy," she said during an appearance on Sirius XM's Radio Andy. "It says everything about their relationship and other stuff that's off-camera."

Representatives for Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall, respectively, did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

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