HBO May Be Rebooting Sex & The City — But Don’t Expect Samantha

And I couldn't help but wonder: What would Sex and the City even look like without Samantha Jones?

That’s a question HBO Max may be answering very soon. There’s a rumour that the iconic series is heading towards a reboot, but with one major change. Kim Cattrall, who has famously been reluctant to reprise her role as Samantha after appearing in two SATC movies, would reportedly not be included in the new project. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon are all rumoured to be returning as their original characters. 

"I'm lucky enough to have the choice, not that I haven't worked for it. I have," Cattrall recently said of choosing to move on from the character in a new interview for the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, released amid rumours of the reboot. "It's something I feel very lucky to have and I'm very protective of it. I wouldn't be any good doing something that I really didn't want to do." 

First reported by Page Six, news of an alleged reboot spread like wildfire over social media, where fans joined Cattrall in their disapproval. 

The news comes as yet another chapter in the ongoing public feud between Parker and Cattrall that has threatened to tarnish the show’s legacy. Though Parker has repeatedly denied any negative feelings towards her on-screen best friend (most notably in 2016, when she claimed that it was largely a sexist media fabrication —  “nobody did that to that to the Sopranos guys”), their actions over the past few years have proclaimed otherwise. 

Back in 2017, Cattrall sparked controversy when she called her co-stars “toxic” in an interview with Piers Morgan, after being accused of tanking a proposed third SATC movie. 

 “It’s quite extraordinary to get any kind of negative press about something that I’ve been saying for almost a year of ‘no,’ that I’m demanding or a diva,” she said. “And this is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City, and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker, in that I think she could have been nicer.”

Asked about it in 2018, Parker’s Divorce co-star Molly Shannon told Andy Cohen: "I just don’t think that’s the way to handle something,” she said. "I think that if you have something like that, whether it be personal, you should deal with it personally. And Sarah Jessica’s the greatest, so I just didn’t like it.”

That same year, Davis threw gasoline on the flames by posting a throwback picture of the cast that pointedly did not feature Cattrall. Soon after, Cattrall’s brother passed away, and she lashed out at Parker over social media after the latter posted a condolence message. 

A SATC reboot wouldn’t come as a surprise from a network that is currently rebooting Gossip Girl and potentially bringing back cult favourite True Blood. Perhaps the omission of Samantha would leave room for new and more diverse casting, something Cattrall has said she would like to see. But then again, why not just leave the cosmos and Manolo’s in the past and create something new?