Sex and the City revolutionized the way women talked about sex on television, regardless of its lack of woke-ness in today’s climate, and called out shitty behavior in relationships, like the infamous dumping via Post It note. But it was also going to do another thing — kill off Mr. Big, the suave wealthy businessman (what does he do again?) that Carrie fell head over Manolo Blahnik heels for. Big is both loved and despised by all, in the 94 episodes and two feature films that make up the series’ entirety, and was apparently set to meet his end in the no-longer-forthcoming Sex and the City 3 movie.
This and many other juicy details that SATC stans will love are revealed in James Andrew Miller’s Origins podcast, as he goes behind the scenes of the HBO shows early days for its 20th anniversary. The third movie is largely not happening due to the dramatic, off and on again (much like Carrie and Big’s relationship) feud between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall. The details are a bit hazy, depending on who you ask, but it seems Kim was not down with the plot of the movie — one where Big was to die “relatively early on,” likely of a sudden “heart attack in the shower,” and the rest of the film would focus on Carrie’s grieving process and her life as an NYC widow. This would leave little time for Samantha Jones’ iconic quips and rules to live by, i.e, “I will not be judged by your or society. I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want, as long as I can breathe and kneel,” and “If I worried what every bitch in New York was saying about me, I’d never leave the house.”
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“People close to Kim believe that the script didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha,” Miller says, on the podcast. “They point to the fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.” However, the actress commented on multiple occasions that she was simply ready for new roles and wanted to move past SATC.
As someone who was always Team Aidan, I’m relatively un-phased by this news. However, Miller interviews almost the full (!!) cast (!!), including Big himself, who says: “I’m still dealing with it. I mean, the whole Mr. Big thing has got real leg to it for better or worse. I’ve stopped even thinking that I’m going to outrun it and replace it with another role.” Listen to the podcast and get the full dirt here.
