Hush hush: Sarah Jessica Parker, co-producer of Sex And The City 2, ordered her cast and crew to sign a confidentiality agreementThey're back. More airbrushed, better lit, and more painstakingly styled than ever. Sex And The City 2 is nearly upon us - it premieres at the end of May - and fans of the original series are agog to find out what's in store for Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte.
Everyone is wondering how well they have got on behind the scenes. Relations between the ladies have been famously fractious - Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha, refused to sign up unless she was better paid last time.
This time around everyone's claiming they had a ball making the movie. Samantha says in the film: 'We made a deal ages ago: men, babies . . . it doesn't matter. We're soulmates.' And that's what the PRs would have you believe is true in real life.
But there are indications to the contrary - starting with the fact that they stayed in different hotels when they were filming.
And why did none of them turn up to the launch of the fashion collection Sarah Jessica Parker fronted this year? Could all three of the others have been busy that night? Or perhaps they are not truly 'friends' off-screen?
This time SJP, a highly successful actress who has a reputation for knowing exactly what she wants, has exerted her control to an even greater extent than she did on the last movie.
She is the co-producer of the film as well as its star. This has left Kim Cattrall out in the cold. The chemistry seems to boil down to three girls on one side, and Kim on the other.
One major source of conflict was the confidentiality agreements that SJP ordered the entire cast and crew to sign. Under its terms, if they are proven to have leaked a story about the movie, they are liable to pay up to $2.5million (£1.6million) in damages. Cattrall nearly came a cropper after she was photographed holding a script, with some of the dialogue visible.
Best friends? Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon in the next film of Sex And The CityThere was a terrible fuss - it was put up on the internet and Cattrall received a warning telling her to be more careful. She sighed: 'I thought: "You have got to be kidding! This isn't state secrets, it's the f****** script for a movie!" It's crazy.
You really have to be careful because I've signed my life away to say I won't tell.
It gets to the point where you're terrified to carry your script around in case someone catches a glimpse of it.'
And the reason for the anxiety is that SJP seems to be convinced that the only way the sequel will do well is if people don't know what is going to happen to the 'girls'. They are all very keen to strike gold again - especially SJP, after her last romantic comedy movie bombed at the box office.
She's almost certainly wrong about why people go to see SATC, though. The first movie took $400 million two years ago, though it was critically panned as nothing much more than three TV episodes stuck together.
To the surprise and delight of the studios, it was an enormous hit. It showed that films featuring women over 40 could actually make money, so Warners decided to rush out the sequel - a script was commissioned within weeks of the first movie's release.
Early signs are that it will be another huge hit - ticket sales are brisk, with many groups of women planning 'party screenings' complete with cocktails.
There is considerable pressure now on the actresses to agree to begin shooting a third and final movie - before they look too old for their adventures in romance and fashion in new York to appear completely unlikely.
The preference would be for a start towards the end of this year, although it will be a push as writer Michael Patrick King doesn't have a script ready yet.
But one source connected with the film used the words 'more haggard' and 'even older' to describe fears over how the stars now look, and the belief certainly seems to be the sooner, the better.
Some people think that they are way past it already. Cattrall is the oldest - a beautifully preserved 53. SJP and Kristin Davis are 45, and Cynthia Nixon is 43.
Love life: Kim Cattrall's Samantha possibly has two romances, one with a toyboy and the other an older manThere have been many unkind remarks about an early publicity poster, featuring SJP in a white dress. 'She looks like a reanimated corpse,' wrote one. Another poster, which shows all four girls in a bar, was labelled 'grannies' night out'.
SJP, recently voted 'the world's unsexiest woman', is naturally alarmed. Apparently, she frets about seeming 'haggard' on screen - because she is so slender-she thinks she's aged more noticeably than her co-stars, and she's thinner than she's ever been.
It's said that she was spotted looking tearful at a salon in new York when they were doing lighting and make-up tests for the film. Apparently she was horrified by the way she had been lit in the film did You Hear About the Morgans?
And by the time they came to film SATC2, she had twin baby girls, presented to her by a surrogate mother, to cope with too. Marion and Tabitha were born in June last year and she started filming in September.
Caring for twins and a ten-year-old is enough to make anyone look baggy under the eyes. no wonder they have all been happy that the movie has taken infinite care over lighting and airbrushing.
The rumour is that more than $1million has been spent giving them electronic tweaks on screen and has been a greater priority this time than the outfits.
So what can we expect? the new movie opens two years after the last. Carrie is living in New York with Big and writing her fourth book.
Writer Michael Patrick King said: 'the question is, what is Carrie Bradshaw like as a wife? What's that about for Carrie, who is the eternal single girl, the rebel, the individual.'
Carrie and Big don't have a baby - they spend the film wrestling with the question of whether they are ready for one or not. Actor Chris Noth, who plays Big, added: 'No matter how long you have known someone, marriage changes things. It's a learning process for Carrie and Big.'
In a recently released trailer, we see Big flirting with a colleague, played by Penelope Cruz, and Carrie telling him: 'We are getting a bit too Mr and Mrs Married. We need to work on the sparkle.'
Samantha is in New York, running her PR firm, Miranda is working for her law firm, and Charlotte and husband Harry have another baby. There will be a big wedding.
Samantha has been pictured in a wedding dress, but that seems to be part of a dream sequence. The nuptials are between Carrie's friend Stanford Blatch and his boyfriend Anthony Marentino.
Sources indicate that at the wedding SJ P wears a tuxedo, and that Liza Minnelli performs at the Jewish ceremony with a highlight of the film being Minnelli, at 64, putting on a high-kicking routine which includes a reprise of Beyonce's Single Ladies. 'It's a wonderful number and I just got my new knee, so everything moves,' she said
Meanwhile, Charlotte and Harry have marital problems. She has Lily and a newborn, and suspects Harry of cheating. She's also said to be surprised to feel sexually attracted to their gorgeous blonde Irish nanny, played by Alice Eve.
Cynthia Nixon said: 'Miranda is still married to Steve. She only has one child. She's living in Brooklyn, still employing Magda, still working as a lawyer, still having brunch with the ladies.' But she's finding it increasingly hard to have so little time with her family, and reports suggest she quits her job in an effort to redress her work/life balance.
Samantha has two romances, one with a toyboy played by male model Noah Mills. When that doesn't work out she falls heavily for an older man, acted by Max Ryan, who is 43 and portrays a European architect named Rikard.
He is said to be the reason why the ladies go to Abu Dhabi on an all-expenses-paid holiday, although other reports say Samantha takes them because her ex-boyfriend Smith Jerrod, played by Jason Lewis, has shot a film in the kingdom.
Michael Patrick King said: 'I thought, OK it's a depression. What do people need? And I thought extravagance. Let's put them on a big vacation. the idea of Samantha Jones, sexually liberated beyond anyone's expectation, going to the Middle East amused me. And I started building the story around that.'
The girls ride camels and go to nightclubs. And the major plot point happens when Carrie runs into her former lover Aiden in a market. 'We bump into each other halfway around the world?' Carrie muses. 'That means something.'
Samantha is said to fall quite seriously for her older beau. There are rumours that she will fall pregnant (she is said to be taking hormone pills in a bid to appear more youthful - might they wreak a miraculous plot twist with a baby for the oldest of the gang?).
SJP said that this film 'is a sort of antidote to the first one, which had a lot of sadness in it. this movie is more like a caper, a romp.'
She added that while in Morocco the four of them 'lived together, worked together for almost eight weeks solid - breakfast, lunch and dinner together every single night.'
Which is odd, because reports insist that Kristin and Kim stayed at the Amanjena Hotel in Marrakech, SJP was at the Mamounia and Cynthia Nixon at the Es Saadi. They were spotted dining separately. But relations do seem to have improved since the state of war which existed at the end of the TV series. The fact that the first film was such a hit smoothed tensions.
Cattrall still wishes that she was paid equally, but Kristin Davis has been a peacemaker between her and SJP. Cynthia Nixon does not want to get involved at all.
It seems that SJP and Cattrall have decided to make peace because they both know how tough it is to survive in the movies beyond 40, and that it would be foolish to sabotage this rich opportunity.
'People don't want to believe that we get on,' said Cattrall. 'They have too much invested in the idea of two strong, successful women fighting with each other. It makes for juicy gossip. The truth of us being friends and getting along and happily doing our jobs together is nowhere near as newsworthy.'
She added: 'I think Sarah is fantastic. She is a born leader and she guides the crew and the cast in such a strong but gentle way. She and I are sick of the rumours. It's exhausting talking about it, and a real bore.'
source: dailymail
No comments:
Post a Comment