‘And Just Like That…’ showrunner Michael Patrick King broke down Samantha Jones’ return and the ’20-year callback’ he hoped fans would catch
Kim Cattrall’s highly anticipated And Just Like That… appearance aired Thursday, and it turns out the actress improvised part of the bittersweet cameo.
As Samantha Jones (Cattrall) hung up the phone after telling Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) she couldn’t make it to “The Last Supper” at Carrie’s Upper East Side apartment, Samantha kissed her phone, sending a virtual smooch across the pond. On Thursday’s episode of the And Just Like That… The Writers Room podcast, showrunner Michael Patrick King revealed that he didn’t write the kiss into the script — Cattrall, 67, came up with it on her own.
“It’s just totally a moment of an actor playing a moment, and it’s really nice,” said King, 68.
Kim Cattrall’s ‘And Just Like That…’ Finale Cameo: All About Samantha and Carrie’s Long-Awaited Call
King explained that, in his mind, Samantha, Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) never lost contact when the publicist moved to London.
“It’s hard not to imagine that Samantha would have gotten a call from Charlotte and Miranda and saying, ‘Hey, Carrie’s doing The Last Supper and this time, it’s real. She’s leaving this apartment,’” he said. “Because I always, in my multiverse of And Just Like That…, Sex and the City, they were always talking. Always.”
Courtesy of Max
Carrie even received a text from Samantha in AJLT‘s season 1 finale.
“It was the texting and talking and not just Carrie, but Samantha and Miranda and Charlotte,” King said. “But we had laid off the texting this season because I felt we were going to the well too much.”
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Kristin Davis and Michael Patrick King.
Eugene Gologursky/Getty
‘And Just Like That’ Finale Recap: Samantha Returns as Carrie Lets Go of Expectations — and Her Apartment
So when Samantha called Carrie in the And Just Like That… season 2 finale “it’s causal,” King said. “It’s not like some giant moment that they’re talking. It’s like, ‘We’ll go out tomorrow when you’re here. It’s no big deal.’”
When Carrie detected a British accent on Samantha during the call, Samantha joked, “Who’s Samantha? This is Annabelle Bronstein,’” referring to the name on the card she used to get into the Soho House pool back in Sex and the City season 6.
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Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones on ‘Sex and the City’.
HBO/MAX
“We do a callback, a 20-year callback to Samantha at the Soho House pool,” King confirmed. “I think it’s a memorable one. So she references herself in a very fun episode of Sex and the City that we hoped that viewers would remember.”
The Soho House episode, titled “Boy, Interrupted,” aired on Aug. 24, 2003 — 20 years to the day before the season 2 finale of And Just Like That….
King previously told PEOPLE he didn’t expect Cattrall to return for AJLT season 2.
“I don’t know what happened, because we didn’t start the season thinking this,” the two-time Emmy winner said. “Some sort of universal magic shifted. I don’t know whether the fans manifested this. I don’t know what happened. Maybe something about the 25th anniversary brought a lot of energy forward, and all of a sudden Kim was like, ‘All right, I’ll make a stop by.’”
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Sex and the City and And Just Like That… can be streamed in full on Max.
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Source: HIS Education