That’s a lot of cosmos! Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall had quite a successful run. From 1998 to 2004, HBO’s Sex and the City aired 94 episodes over six seasons and the core four raked in the cash. However, they weren’t given the same salaries across the board.
Writer and executive producer Michael Patrick King, who also wrote and produced the two films that followed the series, opened up about the pay differences is 2018, revealing that Parker, who led the show as Carrie Bradshaw and also became a producer for the final three seasons, had a higher salary from the start.
“The show doesn’t exist if Sarah Jessica wasn’t the blonde star of the show, that’s No. 1,” he said during a 2018 episode of the “Origins” podcast, titled “Sex and the City: 1, 2 & Out, ” which chronicled the show, the films and the reason why a third movie didn’t happen. “Kim was not at the height of her career, Kristin was under her in terms of notability, Cynthia was a theater actress — and their contracts reflected that status.”
He continued, “As the show progressed, the characters, everybody grew, it became a family. Kristin, Cynthia and Sarah Jessica became one group, and Kim never joined mentally. Kristin and Cynthia went in the light, they became those two ladies, they understood it was Sarah Jessica’s name, look at the posters.”
The Filthy Rich actress has spoken out over the years, sharing that she has no interest in returning for more Sex and the City, opting out of a third film that was in the works but later scrapped. She later publicly slammed Parker, calling her former costar “cruel” via Instagram in 2018.
“Kim fought and said, ‘I’m everyone’s favorite,’” the 2 Broke Girls creator shared at the time, admitting that the Divorce alum was always going to be making more than the others. “[Parker’s] name was contractually, legally, righteously, the only name on the poster due to the fact that she was a movie star in 1998 when the series started and she did a leap to do a show about sex on [HBO], the channel that did the fights, and it doesn’t matter how popular you are. I guess for Kim it didn’t matter how much the raise became if there was never parity, but there was never going to be parity.”
The first film, released in 2008, earned over $418 million worldwide, while the 2010 sequel earned over $290 million globally.
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Scroll through the gallery to see how much the cast was reportedly making then and how much Parker, Davis and Nixon are set to make for the 10-episode revival, And Just Like That, which they are all also producing.
