As part of the reboot cast of Sex and the City, Chris Noth’s future was initially up in the air as the actor revealed he was “hesitant” to step into Mr. Big’s shoes once again. The original HBO series took a candid look at the lives of four friends in their 30s and 40s who looked for love and treated their friends like family. The dynamics of their relationships were entwined as they relied on each other for more than just emotional support. Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) dependence on Big was a significant story throughout the show’s seven-year run.
Big’s emotionally unavailable demeanor became what Carrie’s subsequent relationships were compared to throughout the series. Big dangled a commitment in front of Carrie, an otherwise strong, independent woman of her own means. By the end of the series, fans felt that the time had come for Carrie to move on. When she fell hard for Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Barishnikov) and followed him to Paris, fans believed she had finally gotten over Big. However, a fight with her new love sent her fleeing into the streets of Paris, where she found none other than Mr. Big, ready to take Carrie back to her home in New York.
Noth said in an interview for Yahoo Finance Live that he was hesitant to reprise his role in the HBO Max reboot titled And Just Like That… which will star Parker, Cynthia Nixon (Miranda), and Kristin Davis (Charlotte) from the original cast. He felt he had already given his all to the character throughout the original series and its subsequent spinoff film.
“It was a little bit of a sort of creative negotiation because I didn’t really feel I had anything to offer in that role again. It kind of felt like I had done it,” he said. “But [executive producer] Michael Patrick King is just an incredible writer and has incredible creative ideas, and once we got together and talked about the potential of what we could do with the character, I was all in.”
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And Just Like That… will feature the core group of friends (minus Kim Cattrall’s Samantha), now in their 50s, as they navigate new issues for women of that age demographic. While Noth will appear in the series, it’s unclear if Big will still be married to Carrie for the 10 episode reboot or if their relationship will have the added stress of children or other factors that could lead to deeper, more meaningful storylines for the couple. Fans who felt that Carrie should have never ended up with Big have a significant chance at seeing if their feelings for one another have evolved.
Sex and the City can continue to make as much of an impact on women as it did during the series’ original run. While the groundbreaking original series allowed women to accept their lives, yearn for more from their men and change the outlook on how love and sex can be two different things in a relationship, the revival can take it one step further. This time, Michael Patrick King, Parker, and crew can take this mid-life period of a women’s life and celebrate its many ups and downs in a way that has never before been seen on television in a way only Sex and the City can.