#Sex And The City Creator Defends THAT ‘Riff’ Between Samantha & Carrie In And Just Like That…!

Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King is speaking out about his decision to include a major rift between Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha Jones — AKA real-life rivals Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall — in the series reboot And Just Like That…!

While chatting with Us Weekly about the premiere episodes, which dropped Thursday on HBO Max, King insisted he never had any intention to kill off Samantha (despite another character’s untimely death), explaining:

“And Just Like That was never, ever intended to be including Kim Cattrall because she decided she didn’t wanna play Samantha many, many years ago. We love Kim. I love Kim. I loved her Samantha, and I knew that everybody, including myself, had invested years in those four friendships.”

It would be a big slap in the face to kill Samantha off just ’cause of some behind-the-scenes drama!

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While Miz Jones wasn’t going to be seen on-screen alongside her three best friends, the writer didn’t want to just ignore her absence altogether, continuing:

“So, I didn’t want to pretend that there was an absence — or wasn’t an absence. I wanted to reflect the reality of the fact that there was one not joining. Story wise, I came up with the idea that Samantha’s in London because we didn’t want to kill her. We love Samantha. That’s ridiculous.”

In the premiere, Bradshaw admitted she fired Jones as her book publicist. Upset, Samantha packed up her things and moved to London, where she has since ignored Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte’s attempts at phone calls and texts. Interestingly, while the creator is NOT crediting Sarah and Kim’s IRL feud for the inspiration behind the fictional fight, it seems like their friendship “break up” inspired the writers to focus on the friends that last a lifetime. The 67-year-old mused:

“And life goes on when friendships break up over incidental things that become bigger things. In the writing room, all the writers had a significant friend that they can’t believe they’re still friends with. That seemed like truth, so we reflected that.”

Friendship has been at the core of this franchise for so long — that only makes sense!

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That said, this hasn’t been a clean break. In the second episode, Samantha sends flowers to Mr. Big’s funeral, prompting Carrie to reach out (though the UK native doesn’t respond). Michael thinks this is a pretty normal reaction from even the worst of frenemies, saying:

“What happens when a friend[ship] breaks up? You still remember the good stuff and you reach out every now and then, but there’s no intention of suddenly, ‘Boom, there she is again.’ It’s about that friendship between those four women that’s important and you see in the funeral scene how that resonates. I think that’s what’s so great about friendships — when they show up for each other, even through a fictional riff that we created based on money and publishing and confused wires about, like, personal vs. professional [life].”

There’s no word yet on how Cattrall feels about Samantha’s new storyline, but judging by new tweets she liked, she’s not a fan. The actress, who previously accused SJP of being “cruel” to her, liked one post that read:

“And just like that… I find myself only wanting to watch anything @KimCattrall is in. This is a Kim appreciation tweet.”

And there were SO many more viewers who weren’t thrilled with the highly-anticipated show. Would it have been better if And Just Like That… didn’t create a fictional feud? Or are you glad Samantha still has a presence on the show?  Sound OFF in the comments (below)!

[Image via WENN/Avalon/Michael Carpenter]