HBO Max’s Sex and the City revival has been filming in New York for a couple months now. But long before the paparazzi shots of the cast’s new looks started flooding the internet, there was rampant speculation about how the new series would deal with the absence of sex-positive glamazon Samantha Jones. Kim Cattrall, who played the character in the original show, has made it clear that she wants no part of And Just Like That — likely due to her longstanding feud with star and executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker.
Initial promo photos seemed to indicate that Carrie (Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) would carry on as a trio, having grown apart from Samantha. But over the weekend, The Daily Mail reported that Nicole Ari Parker’s character would be filling Cattrall’s seat at the brunch table.
The Boogie Nights and Empire star plays a new character, Lisa Todd Wexley, a documentary filmmaker with three kids and a billionaire husband. (Because, duh, this show still only cares about rich people!) The British tabloid cites a source close to the show as saying that Lisa and Carrie have become super tight over the past couple years and that Lisa is a lot like Samantha. “She’s feisty and fearless. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She knows what she wants in life and in the bedroom. She’s Carrie’s best friend and an integral part of the plot of the new series. She’s slipped very easily into the foursome,” the unnamed source reveals.
HBO Max first announced Nicole Ari Parker’s casting back in early July along with fellow new cast members Sarita Choudhury and Karen Pittman. The trio join Sara Ramírez and a slew of returning Sex and the City cast members — including all the men these women probably should have divorced by now. When photos of Parker on set as Lisa — wearing very Samantha-esque chunky jewelry — meeting the rest of the girls at a restaurant surfaced a week later, fans cheered the inclusion of a woman of color in Carrie’s historically very white inner circle.
And last week, SJP herself posted images of the new foursome on Instagram. “Oh so fine,” she wrote. “I’d sing along to 70’s love songs with this trio deep into any night.”
