Here’s Everything We Hope Samantha Actually Says and Does in Her ‘And Just Like That’ Cameo
After everything that Kim Cattrall went through vis a vis Sex and the City, we were all proud of her for putting her foot down and refusing to rejoin the cast for the show’s—as it turned out—terrible reboot, And Just Like That… While we’ll never get the full story, at least one thing was clear: Cattrall wanted nothing to do with that franchise ever again, and the team couldn’t let that go. While yes, Samantha Jones was one of the biggest staples of the show (and arguably its best character), it spoke volumes that they continued to drag her character’s ghost throughout the entire reboot.
So when we heard recently that Cattrall will rejoin the cast for a cameo in the second season, we didn’t quite know what to make of it. On the one hand, yes girl, get that bag, get the last word in. On the other hand, AJLT was such a hot mess of a show that we (as Cattrall fans) don’t love the idea of her being subjected to all that mess, especially given her history of tension with the cast.
However, they must have really done some groveling to get Cattrall to even consider making a cameo—one that will reportedly be simply a phone call—and thinking of the stipulations she must have posed made my imagination run wild with possibilities. Samantha once again swooping in and saving the franchise, even just for a brief moment in the finale? Absolutely iconic, and probably the only part of the second season I’ll actively tune into. These are some of the things I would love to see her do and say, all within the realm of possibility.
Getting the last word in
In the first season of AJLT, they made Samantha’s conflict with the girls seem really trivial and ridiculous, specifically over a business dispute as Carrie’s publicist. Truly delusional. The show tries so hard to sell this to us, inadvertently creating a second narrative in which it’s clear that Carrie is, yet again, not quite the victim she thinks she is. We know Samantha would never do this. It’s just bad, petty writing.
In this cameo, I want Samantha to lay the fuck into her. I want Samantha to give her own reasons why she dropped this annoying group of women like hot potatoes. I want her to specifically tell Carrie how selfish she could be as a friend, and that she needed to finally take space after so many years of being the butt of the joke. And I think she could pull this off any which way: Seeing Sam get angry again? Delicious. Seeing Sam handle it coolly and calmly, because she truly is above it all? Phenomenal. Seeing her cry, get her own sense of catharsis? I would probably cry, too. Either which way, Carrie needs a humbling.
As for Charlotte and Miranda, initially I went into this article thinking how much they needed a good roast, as well. Charlotte was ultimately well-intentioned, yet desperately in need of someone to sit her down and help her, and Miranda … good god, Miranda. But honestly, when I think about the best ways to honor Sam’s character in this cameo, I don’t think it’s necessary for her to expend any energy at all for these two. She was always closer to Carrie and had most of her conflicts with Carrie, and unless they really spend time improving Charlotte and Miranda’s character arcs, there’s just no point wasting her words on them.
New men, new girls, new life
Something that made Samantha pretty revolutionary for the time was being an older woman (the oldest in the group), and not needing, nor really desiring, a long-term partner to make her happy. If there must be a man in her life when she appears in AJLT, he had better be just some random hot Londoner who happens to be staying at her apartment for a short period of time. If we see a ring on Sam’s finger as a way of “qualifying” her status without the girls, we riot.
More to the point: friendship breakups are painful, and considering the girls called each other their soulmates during the original show, it’s no wonder that Sam’s absence felt so massive. However, things end for a reason, and I think it’d be reductive to her character (and Cattrall’s career separate from the show) to portray her as being completely lost without her original squad.
Therefore, I’d love for their conversation to center on Samantha’s new life in a massive way. We don’t need to hear so much about how Carrie misses her, or how their lives aren’t the same. We oughta hear how Samantha’s actually been doing, and hopefully with a lot of written input from Cattrall. The new friends she’s made, the luxury of her life in London, how her work has developed … Samantha was always such a captivating character in her own right, and it was always an inside joke amongst fans of the show that she could have easily had her own show.
So, it only makes sense that she absorb most, if not all, of the spotlight of the scene she’s in.
Remind us what sexiness actually is
AJLT got weirdly explicit in ways that were entirely unnecessary and made the whole “sex” component of a franchise about sex … uncomfortable. We truly did not need to see Harry’s fake penis. We really didn’t need to see Brady and his girlfriend have underage sex, and for a variety of reasons, I’m still kind of miffed about the infamous “kitchen scene”—none of which have to do with Miranda’s budding queerness, mind you.
It’s like they forgot that sex could be sexy with a purpose beyond shock value. Part of what made Samantha so refreshing, in this regard, was that her sexuality was completely normalized in a very empowering way, and in a way that validated the sexual desires of women as separate from fulfilling male fantasies. And when it had to be funny, it was actually funny, not puritanically awkward.
So hey, AJLT? Let Sam talk dirty to us again. Let the experts take the reins for a minute. Let her have a conversation like this, unabashedly and with full enthusiasm (big thanks to our Britt Hayes for finding this clip):
(featured image: HBO)
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