Kristin Davis reflected on the early days of filming simulated sex scenes for Sex and the City and how she was so uncomfortable without any intimacy coordinators on the set.
“I did not feel protected,” the actress, 59, told People in an interview published on Thursday, February 6. “I had to hide in my dressing room at the end of the scenario. I had to hide in my dressing room and call my manager in L.A. at two in the morning.
The iconic series premiered on HBO in 1998, and Kristin didn’t think all of the sex scenes were necessary, leaving her “confused” about the volume and “scared” about participating in them.
The level of comfort varied among her costars when it came to sex scenes. Kristin told the outlet that Kim Cattrall was fearless in playing man-hungry Samantha Jones, saying she could “definitely protect herself.”
Sarah Jessica Parker, who portrayed Carrie Bradshaw, was the “most protected,” Kristin added, saying she was the most “uncomfortable” about nudity. Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes, was more open to intimate scenes, but Kristin said she too expressed feeling unprotected.
“Cynthia doesn’t care about anything. Like, I remember one thing she filmed with [David] Eigenberg, and I was like, ‘Why is he grabbing her breast like that? Why didn’t someone tell him to do it?’” Kristin recalled.
“I was like, ‘Tell him to do it more nicely’ And she was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I was like, ‘Who was protecting you there?’ She’s like, ‘No one.’”
The Boulder, Colorado, native said when the groundbreaking show first began airing, the cast “didn’t exactly know what we were doing in terms of the sexuality.”
“All of that was kind of vague,” Kristin recalled. “I also feel like we didn’t talk about it as a group in a way that would’ve been helping and would’ve happened now. Like, if there’d been intimacy coordinators and all that stuff. There would’ve been much more discussion now, but there wasn’t then.”
While she didn’t give a specific timeline, the Cash Out star said over time the show’s sex scenes “became much more our gaze as it should be,” as well as the ladies “being comfortable” performing them.
Kristin played New York art dealer Charlotte York on Sex and the City for its six-season run. While her character dated up a storm in the first two seasons, Charlotte married Kyle MacLachlan’s Dr. Trey MacDougal in season 3 of the series. After their split, Charlotte began dating her divorce attorney, Harry Goldenblatt, played by Evan Handler. The characters wed in season 6 and are still married on the current MAX Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That.
While Kim and Cynthia’s characters exposed the most skin on SATC, Sarah Jessica, 59, previously explained how she was able to avoid doing any nude scenes during her entire run on the show.
“I thought the script was really interesting, and really exciting, and different, and fresh, and I’d never seen anything like that. The only thing I said to [creator Darren Star] that I was concerned about was that I just didn’t feel comfortable doing nudity, and I suspected that if it wasn’t in the pilot, it would be a part of a series,” she told Howard Stern on his Sirius XM radio show in June 2023.
Sarah said Darren assured her, “Don’t do it then, I don’t care. Don’t do nudity. We’ll have other actors, if they feel comfortable doing it they’ll do it, but you do not have to.”
