Kim Cattrall says she wasn't invited to return for And Just Like That but it was 'basically the third movie'

Since putting Samantha Jones behind her, Kim Cattrall has been blunt open about the prospect of her returning to the world of Sex and the City. Now the actress has revealed that because she previously said she's not interested in reprising the role, she wasn't approached to reunite with the cast in the recent reboot And Just Like That.

"I was never asked to be part of the reboot. I made my feelings clear after the possible third movie, so I found out about it like everyone else did — on social media," Cattrall said in a new interview with Variety, adding that even she was perplexed and wondered how the show would work without the full foursome.

Not that it would've changed anything about her decision to step away.

"It's a great wisdom to know when enough is enough," Cattrall said of standing her ground about bowing out of future SATC projects. "I also didn't want to compromise what the show was to me. The way forward seemed clear."

When probed about the fact that her former co-star Sarah Jessica Parker said she wouldn't be okay with Cattrall picking the role back up after everything that had happened between them, Cattrall continued to stand firm.

"It would never happen anyway," she told Variety. "So nobody has to worry about that."

Although Cattrall turned down a script for a third Sex and the City movie in 2017, marking her official "I'm done" announcement, she revealed that some of the movie's plot was used in the new series: namely, Big's death and Carrie's grief.

"The series is basically the third movie," Cattrall said. "That's how creative it was."

But the unseen third-movie script also reportedly centered on something else: Samantha receiving unwanted "dick pics" from Miranda's 14-year-old son, Brady, a plot Cattrall didn't care to take on because she felt it didn't serve her character's journey in a meaningful way.

"I would have preferred for all of us to have some kind of event to warrant a third film. That didn't happen," Cattrall told Variety. "But also, I was ready. And this is exactly what I wished for: to be in different places playing different characters because I'm a character actress. And as difficult as it was, and as scary as it is, to stand up and not be bullied by the press or the fans or whomever — to just say, 'I'm good. I'm on this track. It was so great working with you. I so enjoyed it, but I'm over here.'"

When EW asked showrunner Michael Patrick King last December if a scene from And Just Like That in which Carrie and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) discuss missing Samantha was a way of leaving the door open for Cattrall's return, he was equally as blunt.

"No," he said. "It's Carrie and Miranda talking about their friendship, and how strange it is that they're not together forever. It's not a tease saying Kim Cattrall's coming back… what it is, and why it resonates, is because everybody believes those friendships were forever. The audience believed those friendships were forever, and so did the main characters. We're trying to mirror that feeling, but it's not an invite. It's a story point."

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