Sex and the City stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon recently sat down to reminisce about their time filming the hit HBO series, and at one point they recalled sharing a “near-death experience” on the show’s set. The pair, along with co-star Kristin Davis, joined Sex and the City writer-director Michael Patrick King for a special edition of The Writers Room, a companion podcast for the spinoff series And Just Like That. During the conversation, King eventually brought up a harrowing situation on the set of Sex and the City, when Parker, Nixon, and the group’s fourth member, Kim Cattrall, were shooting a scene in which Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw had to drive a rented convertible up a hill.
“Cynthia’s in the back seat, Kim’s in the right, and Sarah Jessica is behind the wheel,” King remembered. “And the brake line broke and the car took off down the hill backwards and Sarah Jessica steered it somehow. At the bottom of the hill it stopped, and everybody was screaming and panicked.” He then added, “Sarah Jessica got out, her security guy grabbed her and took her up.” King then made reference to a beloved Golden Girls character, quipping, “Kim got out full Blanche Devereaux, collapsed, like, ‘I’ve just had a near death…!’” Parker exclaimed, “Well, she was right,” noting that she felt the same way Cattrall did.
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King continued: “Everybody carries Sarah Jessica and Kim away, Cynthia gets out the back seat by herself, folds the map, hands it to the prop department, and walks up the hill by herself.” Parker replied, “Cynthia was screaming at me in the car. Not, like, screaming at me – I remember her saying: ‘Hit the brake, hit the brake!’ and I was! I could feel my foot on the ground hitting the brake, at one point I was like: ‘I’m going to try any pedal!’”
“It was a near-death experience, “King added. “Everybody went home and collapsed and was like: ‘Should we keep filming? It was so tragic!’” He then praise Nixon, saying, “And that night Cynthia was back on the ball.”
Notably, Cattrall was not present for the stroll down memory lane — due to distancing herself from her former co-stars over the past several years — but she will be returning to the Sex and the City franchise. Cattrall’s character Samantha is set for an appearance in the revival series but will only appear in one scene, and it’s already been filmed. It will reportedly feature Samantha having a phone conversation with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw. However, Variety states that Cattrall filmed her dialogue without any of the other cast members or King, the series showrunner.
