HBO's Sex & The City was the cable channel's biggest hit of the 1990s and the first HBO series to spawn big-screen spinoffs. It was a cultural touchstone, with women sorting themselves into Carries (Sarah Jessica Parker), Mirandas (Cynthia Nixon), Charlottes (Kristen Davis), and Samanthas (Kim Cattrall). But the newly announced reboot of the series is only bringing back three out of the four original actors. The show, titled And Just Like That..., will only star Parker, Nixon, and Davis. Of course, this omission of Cattrall means fans can't help but wonder: What will happen to Samantha in the Sex & The City reboot?
For some viewers, the idea of Sex & The City without Samantha is hard to swallow. The show worked because of the balance between the four characters. Each represented a specific type of woman: Charlotte was the dreamer to Miranda's practical go-getter, while Samantha was the "just sex please" man-eater to Carrie's hopeless romantic.
But Cattrall made i clear long before the reboot was ever announced that she was no longer interested in reprising the fan-favorite role. Moreover, there have been rumors of bad blood between Parker and Cattrall that would probably make a cast reunion pretty uncomfortable. Whatever really went down behind the scenes, it's pretty clear Cattrall won't show up in this continuation of the series. But what does that mean for her character? There are several options:
Killing the character off is the meanest choice the production could make for Samantha fans. But a decision like this would not be unexpected.
There are lots of ready-made reasons for Samantha's death that would make sense in the show's world. Samantha was a good five years older than everyone else, so when Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are in their mid-50s, she'd be over 60. While that's still quite young to die of natural causes, it's not unheard of. She's also survived cancer once already; it's possible the disease returned.
A different kind of choice would be to bring back Samantha with a different actor. However, considering how iconic Cattrall's Samantha was, it's likely a recast actor would not have a very big role in the reboot. Perhaps viewers only see her at the tail end of the occasional Zoom call, with a glancing angle so another actor who kind of looks like Cattrall could get away with taking up the role. Or, perhaps fans don't see her at all. Instead, the show could use recycled snippets of dialogue from the original show on speakerphone, as Carrie finishes up a phone conversation with her pal.
The most straightforward answer is the most obvious: Ignore the elephant in the room until people stop asking. It's not that hard. People grow and change; as they age, they make decisions that lead to drifting apart. Friendships end. Why couldn't that happen with Samantha and Carrie?
The smartest choice, IMO, would be to have Samantha move away. California is 3,000 miles from NYC; Europe is 6,000. Samantha could be off living her fabulous life on new terms, taking a different path than she thought she would back in the late 1990s.
Perhaps she moved to Paris? Sex & The City creator Darren Star does have a popular Netflix series currently set over there, if Cattrall was open to making a cameo...
