As it begins production, Sex and the City reboot must remember to have Samantha's spirit

Vanity Fair

The And Just Like That HBO Max sequel series is expected to begin filming any day now. As Sonia Saraiya points out, Kim Cattrall's Samantha was an essential part of the original series and movies. "If Sex and the City crossed any boundaries or broke any barriers, it used Samantha to do it while the other characters looked on dumbfounded: She dated a woman, fell for a Black man, got Botox, sneered at marriage, complained about children, and most importantly, lived like a horny teenager well into her 40s, even through the breast cancer treatment she got in the last season," says Saraiya. "She was New York’s femme id, a crusader whose superpower was cock. In a neat package that evaded intra-feminist argument, her desire didn’t embarrass or degrade her, it simply turned her on. In season five, when her friends judged her sex life, she retorted: 'I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel.' It’s not just hard to imagine the show without her, it’s also hard to imagine Sex and the City thumbing its nose at aging without Samantha in a starring role. But it’s possible. After all, an inevitable part of aging is being forced to say goodbye to people you love. Maybe Cattrall’s absence will be explained away by suggesting that Samantha died in the intervening decades? If And Just Like That… can’t have her, I hope it will have her spirit. Too many of these revivals are a warmed-over rehash of what the originals served hot, with a few jokes about Twitter or Trump thrown in. Samantha would never look back with nostalgia. Intent on making a splash and seizing the day, she’d have her eyes fixed on the horizon." ALSO: Sarah Jessica Parker visits Carrie Bradshaw's apartment ahead of filming.