‘Sex and the City’: A Fan Once Stopped Kim Cattrall on a New Zealand Beach To Tell Her That Samantha ‘Got Her Through Breast Cancer’

Samantha Jones has always been one of the most popular characters among Sex and the City fans. That’s why fans were devastated to find out that Kim Cattrall, the actress who plays Samantha in the iconic show, will not be rejoining the cast for HBO Max’s continuation of the series, titled And Just Like That…. 

Unapologetic and shameless, Samantha embodied the image of new wave feminism in the 1990s and inspired many women across the world. One of the most impactful moments in Samantha’s story arc is when she ends up getting breast cancer and refuses to allow it to derail her life. 

This narrative served as a huge motivator for many women experiencing similar circumstances in real life. In fact, it touched one particular fan in New Zealand so much, she couldn’t wait to tell Cattrall when she saw her on the beach one day. 

She was noticed by a ‘Sex and the City’ fan in New Zealand 

Cattrall shared the details behind the emotional encounter in a resurfaced 2014 interview with Whistler FilmFestival. Apparently, the fan didn’t even identify her by her real name. 

“I was in Australia and I was filming a car commercial that was banned in New Zealand … And I was on the beach and it was a Sunday and I had the day off,” Cattrall said. “And I was wearing glasses and a funky hat and shorts that were three sizes too big … And this woman, I saw her running I thought past me—she was running toward me. And she was screaming ‘Samantha.’ Not my name, Samantha.”

The ‘Sex and the City’ fan told Kim Cattrall she got her through breast cancer 

After approaching Cattrall, the fan broke down into tears, revealing that Cattrall’s character helped her overcome her own breast cancer diagnosis. 

“And she said to me, ‘You got me through my breast cancer,’ and she had tears running down her face,” Cattrell said. “And I thought … I didn’t know what to say, other than ‘Thank you.’ And she said, ‘No, no, you really—you don’t understand what that meant to me.’ And up until that moment, I didn’t completely understand it.”

Kim Cattrall was intentional about handling the storyline

After finding out about the storyline when it was first written, Cattrall had concerns. She didn’t want the topic to become a cheap trick that the writers glossed over or a form of punishment for her character. 

“I was very concerned about the storyline because I felt in some ways that a character like Samantha Jones, who’s so free and she has no judgment in her, that character … I felt that because she had been so free, a woman in our society had to be punished because she’s so powerful,” Cattrall said. “And I came to Michael Patrick King, our executive producer, and said, ‘How are we gonna handle this? Because I don’t want it to be the disease of the month, and I don’t want it to be a punishment.” 

Thankfully, she and producer Michael Patrick King were on the same page. 

“And he said, ‘No, no, we’re not gonna do that,’” Cattrall said. “And they didn’t. I was so grateful.”