The actress was only offered $5,000 for the pilot – and in true Charlotte fashion – immediately called her lawyer.
Kristin Davis is spilling all of the “Sex and the City” secrets in her new podcast “Are You A Charlotte?” The actress played Charlotte York, the slightly conservative good girl of the group, in the original HBO series, two major motion-picture movies, and in the recent “And Just Like That” spin-off.
While we’ve seen Charlotte grow up through the series, Davis is sharing what it was really like playing her behind-the-scenes. As it turns out, it was far less glamorous than it looked – at least the pilot was.
Davis said she wasn’t a fan of the pilot, and the filming of it offered a lot of tough lessons that she now looks back on more fondly. She detailed how during the initial filming, the show wasn’t that formed, and that Charlotte was almost downgraded to a recurring character – a change that meant a lot less money and screen time.
“I had this big, big deal.” Davis said. “It was like a big, thick, seven-year deal, and we’re doing the pilot and this producer – I think she was maybe a line producer, not an executive producer. One day she comes to my trailer and says ‘oh we have this paperwork we need you to fill out.’”
“I take the paperwork and look at it, and it seems to be a new contract but it’s only two pages long.” Davis goes on. “And it says: ‘You will be a recurring character, and you will be $5,000.”
Davis quickly called her lawyer who told her not to sign it under any circumstances. The actress joked that it was very hard for her to do since, like Charlotte, she’s a good girl. Her lawyer went on to reveal that HBO was allegedly very stressed because the pilot was costing a lot of money. Davis adds that the pilot apparently cost around “$2.5 million roughly … because it costs a lot of money to film in Manhattan.”
“When you look at it, it doesn’t look like it cost a lot. But being in the locations we were filming in, it cost a lot.” Davis said.
Another reason Charlotte’s character almost took a hit was that she didn’t quite have as much initial power. Carrie is witty and outgoing, Miranda is strong and smart, and Samantha is bold and brazen. Comparatively, Charlotte is more mild-mannered, genuinely open to the idea of love and quite a bit naive. According to Davis, it was immediately clear from the script that Charlotte had a “different point of view than the other girls.”
“It’s very clear that I’m on a different trajectory, and you do kind of think: ‘How did Charlotte get to be friends with these girls?’” David said. “This is interesting, right? [But] that is how friend groups are. Honestly, when I look back on it now, I do think they were trying to save money, but I also think they were like: ‘Well, she’s so different, and the other three are kind of powerful, like in control.’”
“To have Charlotte be kind of this looking-for-love, naive character, it is definitely different,” Davis went on. “But in my gut, I felt like it was really important to have this other character. So even though I was super stressed about this weird paperwork thing, I did feel like: ‘No, no, they need me.’”
“And when I watched that group scene, all I see is how much I want to connect with them, how much I want to be with them and fit in, which is kind of heartbreaking in a certain way but also that is kind of Charlotte. She wants to be loved, she wants to find love, she wants to have love with her girlfriends. She wants to connect, you know?”
Be sure to check out new episodes of “Are You A Charlotte?” available on Apple podcasts.
The post Kristin Davis Was Offered $5,000 to Play Charlotte on ‘Sex And The City’ – Then She Went Straight to Her Lawyer appeared first on TheWrap.