‘It’s very painful’: Sarah Jessica Parker lifts lid on Kim Cattrall rift
Sarah Jessica Parker has spoken at length for the first time about her supposed feud with former Sex and the City co-star Kim Cattrall. For six seasons, the pair starred together in the show, which focused on the lives of four New York women.
They went on to appear alongside each other in the two follow-up movie adaptations, but in recent years there has long been talk of a falling out between the two actors, largely fuelled by barbed statements Cattrall has made.
“I’ve spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody on the set, to take care of people,” Parker told the Hollywood Reporter’s awards podcast. “And there just isn’t anyone else who’s ever talked about me this way, so it’s very painful.”
The pair’s relationship appeared to sour in the aftermath of talks for a third Sex and the City movie breaking down, with Cattrall having to release a statement to deny that her “outrageous demands” made the movie impossible. In 2017, she criticised Parker on the show Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.
“This is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City, and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker,” she told Morgan, of the perception of her as a diva. “I think she could’ve been nicer. I really think she could’ve been nicer. I don’t know what her issue is.”
When the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That … was made, Cattrall was written out of the script. Parker has now claimed this was not a deliberate snub, but rather an attempt to respect her wishes.
“We did not ask her to be part of this because she 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,” she said.
“That’s not ‘slamming’ her, it’s just learning. You’ve got to listen to somebody, and if they’re publicly talking about something and it doesn’t suggest it’s some place they want to be, or a person they want to play, or an environment in which they want to be, you get to an age where you’re like: ‘Well, we hear that.’”
Despite Cattrall having publicly rebuffed Parker’s condolences in the wake of her brother’s death in 2018 (“Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now,” she claimed), Parker now claims that as far as she is concerned, there is no feud between them.
“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,” Parker said.
“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’ … There has been one person talking. And I’m not going to tell her not to … so that’s been kind of painful for me also.”