'Sex and the City' Q&A: Kim Cattrall

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Speaking of the syndication...have you seen any of the cleaned-up episodes?
KIM CATTRALL: You know, I can't bear to. I see glimpses. I think because... I went into the looping room, the dubbing room, and instead of the f-word, you'd say friggin'. To me, the way Michael and Darren [Star] and Jenny Bix and Cindy Chupack wrote was very musical, especially for my character. 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. And I did it and I understand the benefits of it being on regular TV — it's reached a huge audience. The only downside to it is, it's not the real thing.

What can you say about Samantha, now?
Well, I think from the preview and from the teaser, you can see that she's not living full-time in New York anymore. But she visits a lot. She looks like she's blooming, but what's really going on? That's the thing that I love about Samantha — it's always, What's really going on? Because it all looks fabulous, it all looks wonderful, but the challenge in playing her is all that underneath stuff: the vulnerability and the fear and the insecure person that she really is, but compensating and dealing in such a proficient way that no one would ever guess. That's the most I can tell you without crossing the line. Last night we were at dinner — a friend had seen it and he came in and was talking a little bit about this, and one of the people at the table got up and left! He said, ''That is it! You cannot be contained, and you are going to ruin this for me!'' He got up and left and went to the bar, and came back and sat at the other end of the table, and said, ''Is he done?'' It's the greatest compliment: ''This is a unique experience, this is Zen for me, I will not have it ruined by you or anybody else!''

So Samantha returns to New York to celebrate her 50th birthday?
Yes. We call it fabulous and 50. Or 50 and fabulous.

In the past Samantha has been teasingly...
Ageless? [Laughs] Yes. She never lies about her age, but she never really says it either. Which, I think, is kind of fantastic.

What's your favorite Samantha moment, or the thing you're most proud of in Sex and the City?
Oh gosh... There was so much. You know, I get a lot of fan mail about the cancer episode. I was nervous that, playing such an outrageous character, it might appear she doesn't have a lot going on in the sense of depth, and I also felt that they might use it as a punishment for someone who has lived so large and done so much and been so daring. The women, always in literature, if she goes that far out, she has to fall. And I felt, Oh, is this payback for all of the excess. And the way Michael wrote it was the antithesis of that. He wrote a woman going through a horrific episode in her life, dealing with it in uniquely her own way. When women come up to me and say ''You got me through chemo,'' it's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. It means so much to me that people went through something as horrific as cancer and then they could laugh at the same time. I thank Michael for that.

Are the high expectations for this movie daunting?
Totally daunting, yes. The bar is so high. And I thought we left on such a high note. And when I read the script, I thought, Wow, this is in the ballpark and then some. You feel like you're surrounded by that great dialogue and those conflicts and circumstances that [King] put us in and continues to put us in. And you just hope that you get to do it again. That's how I am like Samantha — I just want to do it again. Insatiable!