Kristin Davis, who starred as Charlotte York in the TV series Sex And The City, is opening up about her experiences filming some of the hit show’s more intimate scenes.
In a new interview with People, Kristin admitted she felt “scared” of filming the show’s racier moments, at a time when intimacy coordinators – who advocate for a safe work environment for actors during nude scenes or simulated sex scenes – weren’t as widespread.
“I did not feel protected,” she shared in the interview, which was published on Thursday. “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.”
Kristin also confessed she felt “confused” about how many sex scenes the show featured, because she thought it would be off-putting to the show’s primarily female audience.
“I don’t know how the men would feel watching, ’cause I’m not a man. But it would be more for the male gaze than for the female gaze,” she said. “A female gaze — they don’t wanna see that.”
Kristin went on to explain that the show, which ran for six seasons from 1998 to 2006, eventually began to focus on “much more [of] our gaze, as it should be”. But she said she wishes the show had handled onscreen sex differently from the start.
“If there’d been intimacy coordinators and all that stuff, there would’ve been much more discussion now, but there wasn’t then,” she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Kristin revealed she wasn’t the only co-star who struggled with filming explicit scenes.
She said the show’s lead Sarah Jessica Parker, who portrayed Carrie Bradshaw, felt the most “uncomfortable” about being nude on camera, but was also the “most protected”.
Kim Catrall, who played Samantha Jones, was fearless and could “definitely protect herself,” Kristin told the magazine, while the show’s fourth main star, Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), was unfazed by most things.
“Cynthia doesn’t care about anything,” Kristin recalled. “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?’”
She continued: “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’.”
In 2021, a Sex And The City sequel series, And Just Like That, debuted, starring Kristin, Sarah Jessica and Cynthia. Kim Cattrall appeared in one episode in 2023, with a third season coming later this year.