And Just Like That… hits back on our screens this week (June 23), and to celebrate we chatted to Kristin Davis, who plays Charlotte on the show, all about its humble beginnings, her life outside of the show and her hopes for her daughter.
Kristin Davis says she had her doubts Sex and the City was going to ever see the light of day when they filmed the first season. She says there was one real dead giveaway: fake M&Ms.
“We had very humble beginnings,” she says. “I mean, this is a silly complaint, but I’d just come from Melrose Place which is like this big, big machine. Big production, big success. So here I am in New York, on the streets in these tiny trailers, and for craft services – which is like your snacks that you eat during the day – they had this tiny little cardboard table and they put fake M&Ms on it. They didn’t have real M&Ms. And I was like, ‘what is going on that we don’t have real M&Ms?!?’ We were working like 18-20 hour days – working all night and watching the sun come up and I was like… ‘I need real M&Ms!!’
Kristin – who is chatting to us over Zoom from New York – says she knew there was something special about that show all those 25 years ago, but like the rest of the cast, she had no idea where things might go.
“Yes, I felt like a magic when we were together, so I felt the potential. But at the time HBO had like, boxing, and all these male dominated shows, so we were like, ‘gosh, are they even going to pick this up?’ We didn’t know what was going to be the response.”
Of course, we’re here talking about the show 25 years later – after six seasons, two movies and an entire reboot, now in its second season. Which Kristin says, still feels incredibly surreal.
And, it didn’t take long before those fake M&Ms were replaced with the real thing.
“Yes,” she laughs. “We got them a long time ago – now I try really hard not to eat them, y’know? As you get older you have to take care better care of yourself. When I was young I had the diet coke every day and now I’m eating salads.”
It’s the elephant in the room topic – her appearance – because the week before the interview, Kristin hit the headlines for an interview with the Telegraph, which was titled, ‘Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis on fillers: ‘I have been ridiculed relentlessly’’. It seems inane and ridiculous that we’re here to talk about what is one of the most successful TV shows of all time, globally, with its reboot (which Kristin is also an executive producer of) being one of the most talked about shows and celebrates women who are now in their 50s and 60s. Yet, so much of what Kristin is asked about, is her appearance. It’s hard to imagine a show about a group of men living in New York would generate the same sorts of questions and conversations.
But Kristin says she thinks it’s important to talk about – although it’s difficult, and dealing with the attention after such interviews is hard – but, she hopes that having more conversations about aging, might lead to change. A change she desperately hopes will happen in time to make the world a kinder place for her daughter to age in.
“I’m hopeful,” she says. “But it might take longer.”
She says for herself, growing up, she just didn’t see what options she had but to try to freeze time, in terms of how she looked.
“I just saw Andie McDowell,” Kristin says. “She is so great with her grey hair and everything’s so gorgeous. She was saying that we’ve all been brainwashed. And it’s true. For our generation we absolutely were brainwashed. There were not options when we were younger for people to look up to. It was just like ‘don’t age, or you won’t get to work.’ I don’t want my 11-year-old daughter to go through any of that.”
She says things seem to be changing, slowly, and she hopes to be part of that change – but that it’s also “really big and hard to change.”
“I do think sometimes, I think yes, talking about this is good, but then when you talk, you kind of open yourself up to this kind of shaming thing that happens, which is the whole problem,” she says. “We can’t shame each other – everyone makes their own choices and you should be able to make your own choices and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work and then you learn and keep going.”
She says she no longer gets fillers, and instead talks to herself differently when she looks in the mirror. “I say, ‘you don’t have to look like you were when you were 35!’”
She’s also at a completely different point in her life now, at 58, than she was in her thirties, and she’s happy for it.
“I’m a lot different to Charlotte in that I’m not focused on marriage, and being married,” she says. And while it has been fun to ‘grow up’ with Charlotte in a way, she feels she’s actually grown up faster than her character – because she’s had to.
“I’m a single mom,” she says. “It forces you to grow up. My kids are younger, so my issues are different to Charlotte. And I don’t have a Harry to make things lovely for me – I have to make things lovely.”
And for now, she’s very happy with her “lovely” life, and has so much gratitude that after 25 years, she still has a dream job.
“The whole journey has been quite something and never ever, could I have dreamed it up,” she says. “I’m very lucky.”
And Just Like That… screens on Neon from June 23
