Blink and you'd miss her...but Samantha Jones is still back.
Kim Cattrall made her long awaited cameo during the season 2 finale of Max's And Just Like That...(AJLT) on Thursday and even though her appearance was brief, it was the moment longtime fans of the series had been patiently waiting for.
Rather than drawing out Samantha's cameo until the end of the episode, AJLT's writers wasted no time. PR maven Samantha Jones appeared in the first scene of the season 2 finale, calling Carrie from the back of a cab apologising that she wouldn't make it to her "Last Supper" dinner party to toast her leaving her beloved apartment. It turns out, even Samantha is just like us; her flight from Heathrow was canceled due to it being understaffed. She called Carrie to send her well wishes for her new start in her new home, however, and bid adieu to the apartment via speakerphone.
"Thank you for everything you f------ fabulous, fabulous flat," she said in signature Samantha fashion.
And then she was gone! Honestly, kudos to Cattrall for orchestrating one of the most anticipated (and assumedly highest paid) 60-second cameos in recent television history.
Of course, Cattrall revealed earlier this year during a visit on talk show The View that she filmed her cameo separately from the rest of the cast, a condition she voiced to HBO before agreeing to revisit the fan favorite character. She also requested that Sex and the City's famed stylist Patricia Field (who does not currently work on the costuming for AJLT) return to style her character as well, of which Field obliged, considering the pair's close friendship.
“It’s very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO saying, ‘What can we do?’ And I went, ‘Hmm…,'” Cattrall said previously. “Let me get creative and one of those things was to get Pat Field back because I just thought that if I’m going to come back I gotta come back with that Samantha style, I gotta push it and we did.”
The show's creator, Michael Patrick King also spoke to Forbes ahead of Samantha's return and described the poorly kept surprise as the ultimate gift for longtime fans to mark the original series' 25th anniversary.
"It’s a great treat for the fans. What you’ll see, I’m not going to tell you because I’m mad you even know that you’re going to see it because my goal was to keep it a secret as much as we did Big’s death, but didn’t happen," King explained. "It kind of magically just appeared. It was fun to write Samantha again. It’s great to see her in the show.”
This piece originally appeared in Harper's Bazaar USA