As with all big life events, it happened so quickly - it felt like a blur. After almost two entire seasons of And Just Like That, the Sex and the City reboot, the Samantha Jones shaped hole was refilled, and in what style. Dressed in a metallic trench, blood red dress, holding a lime green Fendi clutch and sporting sharp blonde bangs, it was clear that not only was Kim Cattrall back - but so was SATC veteran stylist Patricia Field, who was brought back to dress Kim’s cameo. It may have only been 80 seconds long, but what an adrenaline rush of a cameo it was for those of us who have held Samantha Jones in our hearts for half our lives.
We went from thinking this could never happen, to hearing a wild report that Kim had, in fact, filmed a short scene in a garage in New York earlier this year. We already had a vague idea how Samantha’s cameo would play out, thanks to reports which surfaced earlier this year, but filling in the gaps with the real dialogue as it played out felt so very, very right.
It goes like this: as Carrie prepares to host her Last Supper at her beloved apartment with its two bathroom doors, which she is selling to her Manic Pixie Dream Girl neighbour in order to make a fresh start with Aidan, a name flashes up on her phone screen: Samantha (no surname necessary here, for there can only be one Samantha). She appears: ‘My flight’s three hours delayed, Carrie.’ Samantha adds that she was going to surprise Carrie but bad weather has her grounded in London. ‘The fog finally lifted, but the crew maxed out. I’m fucking furious!’
Everything about the exchange feels like home: the riffing, the music, Carrie’s obvious relaxed joy at hearing from one of her favourite people in the world with whom she has been on a rollercoaster of friendship in the last few years (though has been making slow amends since the death of Mr Big via text messages). And Just Like That has struggled at times to find the heart and spark that SATC dealt so deftly and it's been obvious to viewers that Samantha's presence would deliver that in bags (Fendi ones).
She may be missing this last supper, but of course Samantha has flown thousands of miles to pay her last respects to Carrie’s apartment once before, in the first Sex and the City movie, when Carrie sells it in order to focus on her home with Mr Big once they’re married (no fictional apartment has experienced such real estate jeopardy as Carrie's studio). As Samantha once said, ‘A lot of shit went down in that apartment’ and she asks to be put on speaker so she can address the building personally. ‘I have to pay my respects. Put me on speaker and hold up that phone. Thank you for everything you fucking fabulous, fabulous flat.’
‘Flat?’ Cue a genuinely funny exchange in which Carrie points out that Samantha has adopted a British accent, to which Samantha quips that she is actually ‘Annabelle Bronstein’ (a reference to series 6 episode 10 when Samantha steals a Soho House membership card to avoid the heatwave, which served as a platform for Geri Halliwell to deliver an awkward cameo of her own).
And, just like that, after just 80 seconds, Carrie and Samantha say goodbye. Of course fans are wondering if this exchange is setting the scene for a more established Kim Cattrall comeback for season three - news of which was confirmed just this week. It’s unclear how likely this is, for now, considering Kim filmed this 80 second scene in a garage, making zero contact with anyone else on the cast. Kim and SJP have had a highly-documented rocky relationship over the years over a reported dispute over pay and producer credits on the show, although Sarah Jessica recently spoke about their supposed feud for the first time in June, saying, ‘There never has been a catfight’. AJLT showrunner Michael Patrick King has said even he’s not sure if Kim will return, admitting that it was a ‘magical treat’ that she had agreed to appear at all. ‘I think the fans might have manifested it…Something shifted. Kim had started saying, “I don’t want to play Samantha again.” And suddenly, she was playing Samantha,’ he said. When asked if her season 2 appearance meant the door was open for Cattrall to come back again in season 3, King responded, ‘I don’t think about it because it’s a really, as I said, magical treat that happened. It could be an oasis. I don’t know how it came. I know that it happened, and the audience is going to get to see Samantha in the series, which was impossible.’
Season two of And Just Like That has certainly built to a more loveable crescendo than the rather shaky ground on which it started. A farewell, for now, to Aidan. Miranda has returned to the confident, flawed, loving woman we knew in SATC, and is working in a job she loves and making amends with Steve with the warmth we last saw as they hugged on the Brooklyn Bridge. Charlotte is also slowly finding her way back to something less like the wacky caricature of Charlotte that we’ve been served so far (her drunken night out was a particular win). There are newer characters we might want less of (Professor Naya Wallace) and we might want more of (Seema and her searing monologues on being a single woman in her fifties), but it feels like we’re reaching the alchemy we’ve been searching for since news of the reboot began.
The finale gave us warmth, tears, laughs - and Samantha. As the lady herself would say, ‘I don’t know how you people do it. All that emotional chow-chow. It’s exhausting.’