Kristin Davis has filmed plenty of sex scenes over the years. Playing Charlotte on Sex and the City for six seasons, she got pretty familiar with the routine. But not all of those intimate moments went smoothly.
She has been rewatching the original HBO series on her podcast Are You a Charlotte? with Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kim Cattrall. During a recent episode, some of those awkward filming experiences came bubbling back up.
Someone asked Davis if anyone had ever overdosed on mints before shooting a racy scene. She started to answer but kept the details vague. “I don’t remember if this guy OD’d on mints, because all I remember was just really being like, ‘Get me out of here, please.’ And I’m sorry. It’s not really professional that I’m saying that, but it is the truth at the time. Especially, and I still remember it, because I never liked the storyline, and then everyone liked it but me. It was just one of those awkward things.”
Then she shifted to something she was more willing to talk about: filming the second season episode “Four Women and a Funeral.” Charlotte meets a guy at a cemetery during a designer’s funeral. He claims he’s mourning his dead wife, and she falls for him.
Davis explained how these scenes often played out behind the scenes. “I remember another guy early on in the show, because it was very much a role reversal that the guys would kind of come through as the girlfriend-type parts. A guy would just show up on set, and you’re just in bed with them. That’s not a normal guy part. So they would be just a little thrown off. Like, ‘How do I do this?’ And we would have to try to make it okay and whatever. And I would do my best. And then sometimes I just didn’t do that well, and this would be one of them.”
The actor Kurt Deutsch played the widower Ned, who turns out to be faking his grief the whole time. Davis made sure to clarify that the problem wasn’t him personally.
“It wasn’t Kurt, that actor. I was not upset with Kurt,” she said. “I just didn’t love that one sex scene. And I think I had to come in at, like, 11 p.m. to film it also. So I was cranky about that.”
Late night filming for sex scenes wasn’t uncommon. Davis described these moments as “moveable,” which meant her schedule could get flipped around with little warning.
“You think you have the day off, and then you don’t have the day off, because they’re moving your scene around,” Davis explained. “It’s like the end-of-the-day thing where they might have filmed a whole other day. Let’s say they’ll film with Sarah all day, and then they have got to do her turnaround, right, for her hours. So they’ll send her home, and they’ll bring someone else in to film, say, the sex scene with Kurt, because it’s just one scene and you maybe don’t have to work in the morning. So it’s like pieces and puzzles that they’re moving around, but it doesn’t necessarily make it easy on the other actor who has to come in at 11 p.m. or whatever to shoot a sex scene.”
It sounds exhausting, but Davis made it clear she showed up whenever they called. “They own you. And also, in our world, you really have to think about the group. You are part of a group, and the group is important, and the production is important. And you have to be a team player, or that’s not great.”
That commitment to the show and the team is probably part of why Sex and the City worked so well despite all the logistical chaos behind the scenes. Davis kept showing up, even when she was cranky about the timing or uncomfortable with a particular scene.
Charlotte’s character eventually found her happy ending with Harry Goldenblatt, played by Evan Handler. He was her divorce lawyer, which is a pretty fitting way for someone to find love on a show that was all about the messy, complicated, sometimes awkward reality of relationships and sex in New York City.
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