Kim Cattrall Once Claimed That the Show Caused Her Divorce

TV

Kim Cattrall wasn’t certain she wanted to sign on for ‘Sex and the City’ back in 1998. As a newlywed, Cattrall was thinking about starting a family. She did agree to star in the show, though. Years later, she would say that the series cost her a marriage and her chance at biological motherhood.

Published on April 3, 2021

Kim Cattrall has made it abundantly clear. She has hung up Samantha Jones’s heels for the last time. The iconic actor has been outspoken about her desire to forgo any future Sex and the City projects, including the HBO reboot, And Just Like That. While many believe her feud with Sarah Jessica Parker, who portrayed Carrie Bradshaw, is the underlying reason, Cattrall might have some deeper issues with the series that made her a household name. She once cited her work on the show as the reason her marriage failed.

Kim Cattrall was a newlywed when Sex and the City began

When casting agents asked Cattrall to join the cast of Sex and the City, she initially declined. The role didn’t speak to her, and she worried that a TV show about sex would typecast her. She was also a newlywed when the series began filming. In 1998, the same year that the first episode of Sex and the City aired, Cattrall married her third husband, Mark Levinson.

Levinson, a sound engineer and multi-instrumentalist, and Cattrall seemed to have a solid marriage. In 2002, the couple co-authored a book together. Still, their love wasn’t meant to last. In 2004, just as Sex and the City wrapped up, the couple filed for divorce.

The show’s long hours contributed to the demise of her marriage

In a 2016 interview, Cattrall stated that the show was why her six-year marriage to Levinson ended. She held nothing back, claiming that the long hours led to a lot of competition in her marriage and ultimately forced the couple to part ways.

Cattrall stated that she spent upwards of 18 hours a day on set and rarely had more than a day and a half off to recuperate when the show was filming. The hectic schedule meant she was rarely home, and when she was, she was prepping for another shoot. She said, “I was never there and my husband got lonely and upset and competitive, and it was really difficult, it was really hard.”

Cattrall also stated that Sex and the City was the reason she didn’t have children

Her marriage wasn’t the only thing that Sex and the City cost Cattrall, at least according to the actor. She told Piers Morgan that the series is also the reason she decided to forgo motherhood. In an intimate interview, Cattrall recalled that she was considering IVF when she landed the role of Samantha. She even actively pursued the procedure until she began filming the series.

Her age and the shooting schedule ultimately forced her to make a decision. She said that she couldn’t imagine working 18-hours a day and raising a family. She stuck with the show and made peace with the idea that she would never be a biological mother. Two of Cattrall’s castmates had children while the show was filming, but they were both a decade younger than her. Parker and Cynthia Nixon were both pregnant during the fourth and fifth seasons of the series. They were both in their early 30s when they joined the cast of Sex and the City. Cattrall was in her early 40s when she signed on to play sex-obsessed Samantha.

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