Real reason Sex and the City co-stars hated each other

Who was the ‘mean girl’ on Sex and the City? Kim Cattrall or Sarah Jessica Parker? Now, the show’s EP has finally lifted the lid.

The executive producer of Sex and the City has finally revealed the real story behind TV’s most explosive feud.

Kim Cattrall made headlines last year amid reports that she’d torpedoed plans for a third Sex and the City movie following failed contract negotiations, sparking disappointed responses from her former co-stars.

Just a few months later, she publicly lashed out at Sarah Jessica Parker after the actor sent condolences for the death of Cattrall’s brother.

MORE: Sarah Jessica Parker claims SATC was ‘suffocating’

“Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now,” Cattrall wrote in an Instagram post addressed to her former co-star. “Let me make this VERY clear. (If I haven’t already) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.”

The cast wasn’t exactly best friends with Cattrall (right) off-screen.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Origins podcast, SATC writer and executive producer Michael Patrick King admitted the trouble between the franchise’s stars dated right back to the beginning of the show.

As King explained, since Bradshaw was the biggest name when season one first aired — she scored the biggest pay cheque.

“The show doesn’t exist if Sarah Jessica wasn’t the blonde star of the show, that’s number one. Kim was not at the height of her career, Kristin was under her in terms of notability, Cynthia was a theatre actor — and their contracts reflected that status,” he said.

“As the show progressed, the characters, everybody grew, it became a family. Kristin, Cynthia and Sarah Jessica became one group, and Kim never joined mentally.

“Kim fought and said, ‘I’m everyone’s favourite.’ … (Parker’s) name was contractually, legally, righteously, the only name on the poster due to the fact that she was a movie star in 1998 when the series started and she did a leap to do a show about sex on (HBO), the channel that did the fights, and it doesn’t matter how popular you are.

“I guess for Kim it didn’t matter how much the raise became if there was never parity, but there was never going to be parity.”

According to King, the actor couldn’t accept that Parker was the star.

King also criticised Cattrall for concocting a “revisionist history” of her time working on the show.

“People do things, they make stuff up based on what they want to tell themselves,” he said.

“All I know is that show was spectacular for everyone involved. It was a spectacular success and you have to work very hard to make that Sex and the City story be something that was not good for you, and for some reason, Kim thinks something happened to her on that show that was not good for her.”

In another episode of the podcast, Parker herself addressed the ongoing drama, insisting she wasn’t in a “catfight” with “anybody”.

“I’ve never publicly — ever — said anything unfriendly, unappreciative about Kim because that’s not how I feel about her,” the actor said, adding that reports they’d been fighting during their years together on the show were incorrect.

“We just couldn’t have functioned. I would’ve had stomach-aches every day.”