The Sex And The City row that proves we find it compelling to watch mature women at each other’s throats

IT’S fair to say that whatever faint hope there was of a reconciliation between the stars of Sex And The City, or of patching up a deal to pave the way for a third money-spinning blockbuster, has been irrevocably shot to pieces by Ms Kim Cattrall.

The 61-year-old star has blasted Sarah Jessica Parker as a hypocrite on social media and rejected what she claimed were phoney condolences on the sudden death of her brother Chris, leaving no doubt about the bottomless well of hatred and distrust that exists between the two Hollywood divas.

‘I don’t need your love and support at this tragic time,’ thundered Kim.

‘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. 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.’

Kim’s catty response to a run-of-themill expression of sympathy from her 52year-old former co-star seems gratuitously over-the-top and vicious, notwithstanding the pair’s toxic relationship and the fact that their rivalry has long been an open secret.

It also seems out of character for Kim. Despite provocation from Sarah Jessica and the SATC empire about her disdain for making another movie sequel, she has always behaved with grace and dignity.

When she was interviewed recently by Piers Morgan about their feud, she spoke her mind without descending into vitriol or hysteria.

Perhaps her grief at her brother’s death after his going missing for a spell is still raw and has clouded her judgment, making her behave like a spiteful, hormonally charged teenager rather than a mature woman who knows that nothing good can possibly ever come from trading insults on social media.

Whatever the reason, by howling in public at Sarah Jessica and basically telling her never to speak about her again, Kim has broken one of Hollywood’s golden rules.

Up to now, only bad boys like Charlie Sheen have resisted the shackles of an industry where image is everything and armies of PRs and lawyers work around the clock to control the reputations of its A-list stars.

On a long-running show like Sex And The City, which, if nothing else, celebrated female solidarity, the pressure of presenting an all-girls-together image to the world must have been onerous.

For a long time, the cast succeeded despite Cattrall’s growing resentment at Sarah Jessica’s billing as the show’s main star and its biggest earner.

In the eyes of many fans and indeed Kim’s, her character, the heroically promiscuous Samantha Jones was the show’s real star and without her magnetic sex appeal and comedic talent, the SATC audience would never have grown beyond a cult female following and into the mainstream.

In contrast to the bed-hopping and cheerfully brazen Samantha, SJP’s Carrie Bradshaw seemed like a clinging neurotic wreck, trotting out feminist mantras while at the same time constantly craving male approval.

While Sarah Jessica Parker had it written into her contract that she would not bare as much as an inch of her breasts, Kim seemed required to produce scenes of full-frontal nudity every second week.

Caricature

Adding insult to injury, when Sarah Jessica became a producer on the show, the Samantha character became an even greater caricature of middle-aged lasciviousness, with menopausal hot flushes thrown in for laughs.

Who could blame Kim if, over the years, she began to believe she was being shortchanged by her boss?

It was only when talk turned to making the franchise into a movie cash cow that the ill feeling among the ensemble became apparent.

Word leaked that Kim’s demands for a hefty pay day was the main stumbling block to the project.

While the first Sex And The City movie was a passable romp, even superfans could not suppress their dismay at the follow-up.

The ingredients that made the franchise unique – mainly its upbeat depiction of independent career women who had each others’ backs, whatever brickbats life threw at them in the form of illness or redundancy, hopeless dates or faithless men – were swallowed up in a mindless celebration of crass materialism and wallto-wall designer labels.

Kim Cattrall washed her hands of any more movies but Sarah Jessica Parker still refuses to abandon the idea of getting back into her Louboutins for Sex And The City 3.

She has hinted that it might be possible to do the third movie without Kim Cattrall and has even poked fun at her refusal.

It may seem a pity that the postscript to a mega-successful TV series about female empowerment that captured the zeitgeist of the late Nineties and turned four actresses into very big stars, is a bitchy catfight played out under the harsh spotlight of public opinion.

But to be fair to the protagonists, they are not entirely to blame.

Cattrall and Parker have basically had a business disagreement; it happens all the time in every industry.

The difference is that if it was George Clooney and Brad Pitt who were quarrelling over their star power or profits from Ocean’s Eleven, there would not be a fraction of the public fascination there is in Kim and Sarah Jessica reaching figuratively for each other’s throats.

Thousands upon thousands of SATC fans are now identifying themselves as either ‘Team Kim’ or ‘Team Sarah Jessica’, while Sarah Jessica’s Instagram account has about 1.5million posts, split between vilifying her for her treatment of poor Kim or applauding her for standing up to her enemy.

The fans are engaged in the saga not solely because of SATC’s place in popular culture, but because it’s still a novelty to watch women breaking out of the straitjacket of their social conditioning to assert their value in the marketplace, particularly when doing so puts them in direct conflict with a female rather than a male boss.

There’s also the fact that men are more matter of fact about their conflicts, even when they are full of rage and ego.

Women may rarely fight but when they do, things quickly become emotionally charged, personal and, yes, compelling.

Outsiders feel drawn into the fray and often obliged to take sides.

It’s a long time since Sex And The City first broke taboos about female behaviour or showed the limits of female politeness and self-effacement in the workplace.

This real life scrap between two frenemies is the most dramatic and instructive Sex And The City-related incident since filming closed on the set of the TV series 15 years ago. That’s a lifetime in Hollywood. Kim Cattrall may not have behaved like a lady this weekend but as her on-screen character Samantha Jones might have said, sometimes there’s no polite way of telling someone to get lost.