The Strategy Kim Cattrall Used to Conquer Audition Anxiety—Before Turning Down Sex and the City Four Times
Before she became Sex and the City's Samantha Jones, Kim Cattrall was fighting to be seen, weathering bruising big‑league auditions that nearly knocked her off course. In 1998, on the brink of the role that would define her, she laid bare the rejections and tough rooms that made her breakthrough anything but guaranteed.
Kim Cattrall almost didn’t become Samantha Jones. Before Sex and the City took over Sunday nights, she was 42, wary of auditions, and convinced she might be the wrong age for a show built on friendship, cosmopolitans, and very frank sex talk. She even turned the job down four times before saying yes. Here’s how that happened, and where she’s landed since.
The pre-SATC headspace: audition dread
Right before her 1998 breakthrough, Cattrall told The Hollywood Reporter she was rattled by the whole audition grind and by the narrow roles she was being offered back then.
"To go out to the real world, where people could say no, was terrifying to me. I was so disappointed that they were asking so little of me, other than to cry or to be hurt or emotionally unstable or drunk."
Four passes, then a yes
Born in 1956, Cattrall was about 42 when HBO came calling with Samantha Jones. She kept saying no. Four times. The hesitation wasn’t about the character’s boldness so much as her own concern about age and expectations for women on TV at the time. As she later put it to The Times, it was a case of "self-inflicted ageism" that eventually flipped once the culture caught up: "40 became sexy."
When she finally signed on, Sex and the City ran six seasons on HBO, and Samantha became the role people still shout at her across the street for.
After the series: movies and beyond
Cattrall returned as Samantha on the big screen too, including in the 2010 sequel Sex and the City 2. And despite the occasional shorthand you might see that frames that as her last major film moment, she kept working after that, on both film and TV.
The quick And Just Like That... cameo
HBO revived the world of Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte in 2021 with And Just Like That..., this time focused on midlife friendship and change. Cattrall didn’t rejoin in a full-time capacity, but she did pop in for a single cameo in the season 2 finale in 2023, aptly titled The Last Supper Part Two: Entree. It was brief, playful, and very Samantha.
Where she is now
Since that cameo, Cattrall also took on a 2024 podcast project called Central Intelligence. There’s nothing officially announced about more Samantha right now, but if the last 25 years have taught us anything, it’s to never rule out a surprise call or two.
Sex and the City and And Just Like That... are streaming on Max in the U.S.