‘Sex and the City’: Kristin Davis Convinced Producers She’s a Charlotte Not a Carrie
Sex and the City was a phenomenon from the first time it aired. The show, based on Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name, follows four women as they navigate the dating world in New York City. The close-knit group of friends share everything about their lives — including their bedroom antics. The show hooked fans from the start. Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte became household names. While it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the characters — Kristin Davis revealed producers wanted her to read for the role of Carrie first.
‘Sex and the City’ premise
Bushnell’s book was based on the columns she wrote for the New York Observer in the mid-’90s. She detailed parts of her own dating life and others she met. Most of the characters in the show include inspiration from real-life people she wrote about. The series set out to depict a close group of women friends that explore life and relationships through four different perspectives. At the time, delving into issues like sexuality and promiscuity were groundbreaking — especially with women as the central characters. While the series was a hit worldwide and is still in syndication today — it also featured two follow-up films and a prequel airing on The CW network entitled The Carrie Diaries.
Behind the scenes
While onscreen, the four friends bickered but always had each other’s backs. That wasn’t true in real life. Tensions between Cattrall and Parker were well known. The rest of the ladies saw Cattrall as a scene-stealer, and reportedly by the end of the series, no one even talked to her. The two tried to play nice during interviews and silence the rumors, but in 2018, Cattrall had enough. After Parker reached out during Cattrall’s brother’s death, she snapped. Cattrall seethed that Parker’s constant reaching out was just for her image and only reminded her of how cruel she’d been onset.
While thrown for a loop, Parker had other missteps along the way. Even with issues between the ladies boiling up behind the scenes — sometimes things got dangerous on set. Parker needed a tetanus shot after her and Chris Noth nixed stunt doubles and filmed a scene where they fell into a pond in Central Park. Parker cut her foot during the act and received a tetanus shot as a precaution.
The characters — Kristin Davis as Carrie?
Right from the start, each of the four women needed to have different ideas and viewpoints. The narrator of the whole series, Carrie Bradshaw, was played by Sarah Jessica Parker. She wasn’t initially on board with accepting the role, worrying it would interfere with her movie and theater roles. While it’s hard to even imagine anyone else playing Carrie, Kristin Davis, who ended up with the role of Charlotte York, was originally supposed to read for Carrie.
But Davis knew early on she wasn’t a Carrie and convinced her agents to try for the role of Charlotte. The initial description for Carrie included “the body of Heather Locklear and the mind of Dorothy Parker.” The Insider reports that Davis could never fulfill that description, “All Davis could think was, ‘I am never in a million years going to have the body of Heather Locklear … Carrie’s fantastic, but I’m Charlotte.” Davis was right — she is a Charlotte.
Producers cast Kim Cattrall as sexy Samantha Jones, but she was hesitant about the role too. Cattrall was older than the rest of the cast and wasn’t sure how they all would gel. Cynthia Nixon played the sassy, career-minded Miranda Hobbes. While each of the women had vastly different views on everything, their tight-knit friendship held them up through tough times and resonated with viewers.
