Kim Cattrall says she turned down 'Sex and the City' three times before agreeing to star as Samantha Jones

• Kim Cattrall said she turned down "Sex and the City" three times before playing Samantha Jones.
• "At 42, I really didn't think I could pull it off. I finally said, 'You're making a mistake here,'" she told Variety.

Kim Cattrall said she turned down the offer to star as Samantha Jones in "Sex and the City" three times before finally accepting.

"I turned it down three times. I didn't think I could do it," the actress told Variety. "At 42, I really didn't think I could pull it off. I finally said, 'You're making a mistake here.'"

Show-creator Darren Star also told Variety that Cattrall turned down the role three times and said she "wasn't interested in a TV series" at that point.

"Now it's impossible to imagine the show without her," Star said.

Cattrall recalled that once she signed on, they shot the pilot, which she told Variety was "good but it wasn't there." And eventually, it "started to find its way," Cattrall said.

"I realized, because I'd never done a series before, the more you play the character, like in theater, the more you add to it and change," she told Variety.

In one example of her character evolving, Cattrall remembered the first time she created Samantha's laugh.

"I thought, 'Holy shit, that's great. Sam just got a new laugh,'" she told Variety.

Cattrall starred as one of "Sex and the City's" four leading ladies for the next six seasons and two movies, but she is famously absent from the show's reboot, "And Just Like That...," which premiered on HBO Max in 2021.

She told Variety that she was never asked to be a part of the reboot after she made her "feelings clear" about continuing the role for a possible third movie.

"I've come to the conclusion that really the greatest compliment I could have as an actor is to be missed," Cattrall said.