Angela Mollard: Carrie and Samantha don’t have to be happy – just real
It’s a fact of life that sometimes people fall out and never make up so a reconciliation between Carrie and Samantha on And Just Like That would do both women a disservice
Opinion
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Like every woman who was alive as the last century tipped into the current one, I am poised for the new season of And Just Like That and cannot wait to see what happens with Kim Cattrall, aka Samantha.
Rumours abound that the erstwhile Ms Jones appears in a single scene and it involves a phone call between her and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie. But that sounds too dull for words. You don’t reprise television’s most compelling character since Joan Collins’s Alexis Carrington to have her filmed in close-up with a phone pressed to her ear. Unless, of course, it was to reveal something tantalising like, say, she’d slept with Aidan.
Oh please! Don’t be shocked. If you are one of those people who are hanging out for a reconciliation between Carrie and Samantha then it’s time you toddled off back to watching something about the Amish. Or Little House on the Prairie.
Because the last thing we need now we’ve got these characterful, trailblazing 50-somethings back on the screen is to infantilise them with a kiss-and-make-up like two toddlers who’ve had a spat in a sandpit.
Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and now Samantha are returning quarter of a century after they made their debut in Sex And The City because they are still relevant. Arguably, they’re more relevant. To all of us who have divorced, lost a loved one, struggled to have a baby, chosen not to, quit a job, questioned our sexuality, lived through cancer, been dumped, bought too many shoes and dealt with teenagers, these fin de siècle femmes are not facsimiles of womanhood, they’re the real deal.
Beyond the clothes and the cosmopolitans and the sex, were four women who captured what it was to be vibrant and self-sufficient at the end of the 20th century. We loved them because deep within their genius characters and the sharpest of scriptwriting was a profound message: that it is the painful, messy, lonely, uncertain but, ultimately, connected moments that make a life whole.
When Big died straight out of the blocks in the first season of And Just Like That, we were reminded that this is a franchise that makes us feel. And if we can believe that Carrie has not only lost the love of her life but will survive it, then we must believe that she and Samantha – and the real-life women who play them – have experienced the end of their friendship. You cannot have Carrie utterly grief stricken or Charlotte confronting infertility or Miranda carefully ending a marriage to explore a same-sex relationship if you then insulate friendship and put it on a pedestal as if it’s immutable. Everything about Sex And The City and its multiple spin-offs is transgressive; to wish a reunion on Carrie and Samantha is vanilla.
Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps because I lost a friendship over the past year – and hell it hurt – I don’t want to be mollycoddled with some happily ever after. Sex And The City may hold up friendship as the essence of the show and the only thing we can trust to endure. But frankly, if half of marriages end in divorce then we’re ascribing worryingly high expectations to female friendships if we don’t accept they will sometimes falter or come to a natural end.
That Parker and Cattrall, and their respective characters, have fallen out should not surprise us. In the first instance the two actresses were working on an ensemble show but one of them – Parker – had more seniority. She probably got paid more even though Cattrall had a higher profile coming into the series. Somewhere in interviews one or both have alluded to the reasons for the breakdown in their friendship but I’m not digging it out because does it really matter? Experience tells us it’s usually failings or misunderstandings or poor communication from both sides that leads to any relationship breaking down. Friendships, no matter how many shared secrets, lunches, phone calls or cocktails, are not immune. As Kristin Davis, who plays Charlotte, said of the feud this week: “You have to respect people’s wishes. I’m not gonna waste energy on it. I can’t change anybody.”
She’s right. Just as we’ve spent years willing Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston back together as if the two of them reconciling would somehow restore world order, we have to let go of “Camantha” fantasies. They may have been great mates for a decade or so but ultimately Samantha was different to the other three. She was more transactional in her relationships and her currency was seduction. And that’s OK.
Nevertheless, I’m thrilled Samantha is returning for this season. How intriguing that she agreed to take part on the proviso she doesn’t have to film alongside Parker, Davis and Cynthia Nixon. She even insisted that the series’ creator, Michael Patrick King, wasn’t on set. I can’t imagine for a minute that she’s agreed to a pathetic simpering reconciliation scene. What I do hope is that she’s negotiated a massive fee.
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