ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: There was so much speculation on the first attempt at a movie, in 2004, falling apart. Why didn't you want to do it the first time around?
KIM CATTRALL: Well, first of all, I don't think it was just me. None of us had deals. I don't even think that the studio really believed in it. Now, that seems hard to believe, because the show has grown as far as viewing numbers. But I don't know if [those numbers were] enough of a phenomenon for Warner Bros. to really, really take it seriously. For me, [considering] what was going on in my life, I really needed to take a break. And people made it about different things, whether it was agents or lawyers or whatever. I just felt with the challenges that I had with my family and with my relationship, I just needed to go home.
Home to Canada?
Yeah, yeah. I started a production company, and then I went back to my other home, which is Britain, where my mom and dad [are from]. I was born there. It was really a feeling of having a different pace in my life and enjoying that. The amount of time it took to get back here was, for me, needed. It was almost like a healing period. Things happen when they're supposed to happen. I think there was only one way to come back, and that was on the level that we left. [Writer-director] Michael Patrick King feels that we've achieved that, and I couldn't be happier.
I don't want to belabor it, but when the movie fell apart the first time around, all of the finger-pointing turned your way. How did that feel?
Well, it's devastating, because it was not true. What am I gonna say? I tried to give the story and my side of it. My separation from my husband, and then my divorce, was all over the headlines here in New York and in the gossip columns. That was just really hurtful. People in my family I hadn't even told, and because I wasn't here or there with my husband, people starting putting things together. I kind of really needed to get away. It's unfortunate, but again, I feel that the best thing that has happened is the growing and maturing of not just the film but of the actors and the director. I think that the timing was ultimately right. It happened when it should have happened, and I'm just glad that it did. Because to have such an amazing experience and then for it to end up in a way that was totally unfair left a little bit of a sadness with me. But I feel that has been rectified by Michael and Sarah [Jessica Parker] speaking up and saying, you know, none of us had deals, none of us were ready, it seemed like a great idea at the time but maybe it was before its time, maybe it needed a saturation time, maybe it needed the Devil Wears Prada to bring people back to Sex and the City.
Have you found the show is even more popular now, since it's been in syndication and on DVD?
Absolutely. If we'd done it four years ago, it'd be like, Oh God, them again? [Laughs] People always ask me, ''What do you think about these new shows that sound disturbingly like our show?'' And I can't really see them because I don't think I could be anywhere near objective, but I also think, Mmm, it just wouldn't be the same.
NEXT: ''I went into the looping room, the dubbing room, and instead of the f-word, you'd say friggin'.... And I just remember fighting with it when we had to do the dubbing, because it just didn't have the same rhythm. It just wasn't as real.''
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