Some of Sex and the City's most memorable lines and moments have come courtesy of Kim Cattrall, playing the ever-single Samantha. But when the series left off, Samantha was knee-deep in monogamy. Cattrall chatted with reporters just before her film was released about what it felt like to go back to the character, where the franchise's character arcs come from, and how Samantha's coped with a measly one man. 

Q: What I was just going to say to you is I’ve watched a lot of behind the scenes stuff on this movie because I’ve been producing all these specials, and one thing that I’ve never seen before and I don’t know if you were prepared for it, was how the fans on the street would react while you all were shooting and the crowds of people around. What was that like, to be so embraced by the city?

A: It was fantastic and quite overwhelming.  When we finished the series we were a half hour show on HBO, and in the four years that we were not making the series I felt that we were more popular than our wildest dreams. I mean the fan base just went from North America to all over the world, and when we were filming there were people from different countries.

You know, they knew. They not only knew our characters, they knew our name, they knew our director’s name and when Pat Field was on the set they were screaming, "Pat, we love you!" I mean this was not just fans of people in front of the camera, but the people who were behind the camera, behind the scenes, so that’s a pretty invested audience. That really is.

Q: It was a real sophisticated audience that first grabbed the show and then it became really popular when it was on HBO, but then could you feel the changes when it started showing on TBS? Did you feel like all of a sudden it rolled across the rest of the country and became this phenomenon?

A: I did. I’ve never been able to watch it on TBS because I just feel so faithful to the original, and I think a lot of people got a taste of what it was like and then they decided they were going to rent the DVD’s to get the real thing.  But I think there is enough there that you get who those women are, and you get what the show is about. But no, definitely. I mean I’ve been spending a lot of time in Europe working there and in Canada where my family is, and I felt that wherever I go there is a fan base that is so incredibly faithful.

Q: It’s fascinating that it’s huge in Russia and it’s huge in Italy.

A: Huge, huge. They have group discussions in Italy after the subject of the episode.

Q: No wonder everyone thinks America is crazy.

A: I know.

Q: But one thing they must think is people in America have great friends, because it seems what it all boils down to in Sex and the City is how important these four women are to one another.  At the end of the TV series and stuff, did you think about what your character arc would be? Did you talk about it with [writer/director/producer] Michael Patrick King? Did he tell you what it was going to be or was it sitting down with the script?

A: No, in the series at the beginning of every year we sat down with Michael and he would say this is the general arc, and he would show, he would just tell us, what basically the script outline was going to be. But they had four or five scripts ready to go with tweaking, and then the rest they were writing as we were filming, so even though we knew the basic outline, we didn’t know the ins and outs of the plot.

And some things did change drastically.  At one point Samantha was supposed to have  a child and that was scratched.  And then one of the other characters was supposed to be ill with cancer, and then it became Samantha’s story, so there was a lot of changes along that 7 year period. 

But I think that Michael – I mean I trust him so much – he writes so beautifully for the four of us. He knows these characters like the back of his hand. They are the women in his life and I think that with that trust and with this amount of time that we have collaborated, I knew that when he finally did write his script it was going to be the right time to make the movie.

Q: What was it like – no, not stepping back into Samantha’s shoes because I imagine that she’s enough you that it’s not like it’s a huge stretch to step back into her shoes – but what were you most excited [about]? What new aspects of her character were you most excited to explore?

A: Well I was so fascinated to read the script...When we left off she was in a monogamous relationship, and, you know, I was very skeptical about that. When I got the last story lines for Samantha, I said "This just doesn’t feel like Samantha." [King] says "No, no, no, have faith, have faith." And in the four years she really has hung in there with this relationship, but because it is a story and stories are about conflict, you see how she’s handling it four years later, how successful this wandering appetite will be, but that’s all I can say.

Q: You did some shooting in LA versus New York. Did it feel strange to be the one taken out of the city from Sex and the City?

A: Absolutely.