Trivia / Sex and the City

• California Doubling: Carrie's apartment is on the Upper West Side, but the building used for exterior shots is in Greenwich Village.
• Defictionalization: The book Love Letters of Great Men that was central to the plot of the first film didn't actually exist, it was a prop created for the film. An official tie-in version was published shortly after the film premiered, and a few copycat editions from other publishers followed.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The naturally blonde Cynthia Nixon dyed her hair red to play Miranda.
• Fake American: Kim Cattrall was born in England and raised in Canada. As of August 2020, this is averted as she is a naturalized American citizen.
• Foiler Footage: Four endings were shot for the series finale.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Sarah Jessica Parker in Season 5.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • It was rumoured that Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall didn't get along. Apparently, the two would ignore each other anytime they weren’t filming scenes. After the franchise has ended, both chalked up any tension between them to exhausting days on set. However, in February 2018, it became clear that the feud between them was quite real. Cattrall lashed out at Parker in an Instagram post after Cattrall's brother died, saying that Parker was not her family nor her friend, putting a kibosh on any chances of a third film with her involvement.
  • In 2021, Kristin Davis' stand-in shared her account of mistreatment by some of the crew and one anonymous actor.
• Refitted for Sequel: The second movie's subplot about Charlotte's insecurity regarding her young, braless nanny was originally written for the first film, but ended up being cut out during script revisions.
• The Red Stapler: The name "Aidan" seemed to increase in popularity possibly as a result of the show.
• Star-Making Role: The four lead actresses had varying degrees of fame before starring in the series, but have now catapulted to A-list levels of stardom.
• Technology Marches On: The plot of one episode revolves around Carrie refusing to get an email address, because she considers it a weird sex thing. New Media Are Kinky?
• Throw It In!: In one, Miranda is contemplating her "just friends" relationship with on-again, off-again boyfriend Steve (who is the father of their son Brady). In an earlier scene in the episode, Steve picks Miranda's favorite flower, lilacs. Later in the episode, she's at a wedding, and, setting, a sprig of Lilac onto a table, asks her 1-year-old son Brady, whom she's holding, whether she ought to give Steve another chance. A second later Brady stretches out his hand for the flowers and picks them back up. This was unscripted, and worked for the scene particularly well.
• Troubled Production: While Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte were best friends on-camera; a different story happened off-camera, most if not all of the drama rotating around Kim Cattrall.
  • According to a 2008 book proposal shopped by Clifford Streit—the real-life inspiration for the show’s character Stanford Blatch—tensions on set began because Cattrall was arguably the biggest name among the cast in the beginning; she was a bonafide movie star, having headlined Mannequin and Big Trouble in Little China, and "a natural comedienne, and a scene-stealer in the best possible sense — the camera went right to her." This was, it seems, a problem, given that Sarah Jessica Parker was playing the show's heroine, Carrie.
  • A clique began to form, leaving Cattrall out in the cold. Parker and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda), who'd known each other since their days as preteen actresses on Broadway, gravitated toward each other and pretty quickly included co-star Kristin Davis (Charlotte) in their group. For the first couple of years, Cattrall had a real ally on set in the form of series creator and producer Darren Star. But when he left after the third season and was replaced by Parker's friend Michael Patrick King, Cattrall was completely isolated.
  • Running up to the end of the series, there were stories filtering into the tabloids, such as the New York Post and Daily News, on an almost weekly basis about the on-set tensions. By the end, no one would talk to Cattrall.
  • Cattrall reluctantly signed on for the first follow-up movie in 2007. Despite the tension, the movie was a hit — making $415 million worldwide. Producers, including Parker, were eager to replicate the financial boon and wanted to make a second movie as soon as possible, but Cattrall held back. Soon, gossip started circulating about her "diva demands." She eventually signed on, after demanding, and receiving, more money. Even with more money, by the time filming started, things were awkward.
  • Reports surfaced in fall 2017 that Cattrall wasn't interested in participating in a Sex in the City 3 movie. Citing unnamed sources, a Daily Mail "exclusive" blamed the botched sequel plans on Cattrall's "ridiculous demands." Cattrall categorically denied that, tweeting that she had made clear she didn't want to do a third Sex and the City movie back in 2016. In a subsequent interview with Piers Morgan, Cattrall also said she and her co-stars had "never been friends," despite their on-screen bond.
  • Lest there was any shred of remaining doubt about Cattrall's feelings toward Parker, an Instagram post put the matter to rest after Cattrall's brother Chris died in February 2018. Parker had expressed sympathy for Cattrall's family at a red-carpet event, telling magazines that "we all send her our love and condolences" while, in the same interview, not ruling out the possibility of a third Sex and the City movie but without Cattrall. Cattrall fired back on Instagram, "Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now. 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."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Charlotte was supposed to get pregnant around the same time Miranda did in Season 4, and storylines would have contrasted their parenting styles. But Michael Patrick King and the writing staff changed their minds, thinking that they couldn't generate enough distinct material out of that, and thus giving Charlotte one of her most memorable plotlines.
  • Alec Baldwin was originally meant to guest star in "Escape from New York", but backed out. Warren Beatty and George Clooney were considered to replace him before Matthew McConaughey was cast.
  • An unknown Pedro Pascal lost an audition for the show, according to his older sister Javiera Balmaceda. Fortunately, the next decade would give an older Pascal another opportunity to win HBO viewers' hearts.

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