I’ve always known I was a Samantha. While my friends were planning weddings and buying cushions, I was knee-deep in what are now known as ‘situationships’ (but what were then simply sexual relationships without clear rules or commitments). Life was fun and chaotic and I loved every second.
Just like Samantha in Sex And The City – the hit TV series of the late nineties/early noughties built around the lives, loves and friendships of sassy New Yorkers Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha – I was always the one at brunch steering conversations about mortgages back towards juicier topics, like the high-old time I’d had with a bloke I met the night before.
It’s not that I don’t care about my friends’ lives. I do. But there’s only so much chatter about kitchen renovations one can endure before needing to inject a little raunch.
And this is why the ongoing sequel to SATC – And Just Like That, the third season of which launches today – feels so off to me. Binge-watching the second series recently, I didn’t crack a smile once. Not one ‘God, I’ve been there’ moment. Because there’s no Samantha. Without her, the show that was once the holy grail of female friendship and sexual liberation feels like a beige cashmere snooze-fest – all woke storylines and none of the raw, realistic chaos that made SATC iconic.
Go back to any season of the original show – there were six and two films – and I can find something relatable, even today. (Carrie getting dumped by a Post-it? That’s the modern-day ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ text. Samantha hanging up posters around New York of cheating Richard? It’s an Instagram rant gone viral.)
And Just Like That – without its central whirlwind of no-strings sex Samantha Jones – is all Met Gala dress fittings and million-dollar real estate dilemmas. Who can relate to recently widowed Carrie having to choose between mansions during a cost-of-living crisis? Not me. Not anyone I know.
Kim Cattrall has long made it clear she didn’t want to reprise the character after the second SATC movie in 2010 because Samantha wasn’t developing. She wasn’t even asked to be in the first series of And Just Like That. Sure, there’s the tiniest of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ cameo in series two, with Samantha in a London taxi, but without her, the life and light has gone out of the sequel.
The reboot contains no wild threesomes. No one-liners about ‘vibrating panties’. No woman owning her sexuality without needing permission. Samantha was fantasy and reality, the friend we admired, the woman we secretly hoped to be after two margaritas.
Jana enjoys being a Samantha, as played by Kim Cattrall in Sex And The City
Yes, the writers have tried to find a replacement in glamorous property magnate Seema Patel, who is back in season three, I hear. But at best she’s Samantha-lite, with storylines revolving around rich men with erectile dysfunction or elusive French lovers who won’t leave their wives.
Where are the firemen? The tradesmen? The emotionally unavailable chefs? The kind of attractive men Samantha sought out and who made the show interesting and outrageous.
Everything now centres on wealth, not sex. There’s barely any dating and even less romping. It’s like the worst girls’ night out ever – all small talk and no gossip.
Professionally, perhaps, you might think of me as more of a Carrie Bradshaw. Like her, I’m a sex columnist – for the past two years I’ve been writing for Daily Mail Australia and this month I start a column for the Mail in the US, which you can read on Mail+.
But when I jokingly described myself as the ‘real-life Samantha’ at a dinner in New York, it wasn’t just a cheeky throwaway.
Now that I’m in my 40s, I can honestly say I’ve racked up a few Samantha-esque escapades worthy of a group text and X-rated debrief over brunch.
Like the time I scheduled an afternoon rendezvous with a ‘special friend’ on his work break. Far more thrilling than any three-hour marathon, it was a delicious little time-out. Why? Because I’m single. I work from home. And I can.
And let’s not forget the multitude of toxic exes I’ve given far too many chances to, including the one who called me from London sobbing because he was homesick. Naturally, I dropped everything and flew over to comfort him, only to discover by the time I arrived he’d found another blonde to stroke his back.
Without Samantha, the new Sex And The City series feels like a beige cashmere snooze-fest
But rather than cry into my Pinot, I simply moved on to someone shiny and new. If that’s not peak Samantha energy, I don’t know what is.
Because while society loves to imply your sex life shrivels with age, I can confirm it only gets better – as long as you stop waiting for permission to enjoy it.
I’m part of the growing tribe of single women navigating a dating market that is more confusing than ever – where sex is easy, connection is rare and the odds feel stacked in favour of emotionally stunted Peter Pans, those men who refuse to grow up.
In writing about sex, dating, and relationships, I’ve learned women are starving for honesty. Not perfectly filtered advice but the messy, uncomfortable, very real stuff. The ‘I faked it at first but now I’m in too deep’ stuff. The ‘my personal trainer keeps invoicing me even though we’re having sex’ stuff. The Samantha stuff. Because I’ll let you in on a secret – what women talk about during cocktails is far juicier than anything And Just Like That serves up. We’re exploring why more women are turning to late-in-life lesbianism, for example, or trading stories about the minefield that is dating a freshly divorced man. And if we’re talking about it in real life, it deserves a proper platform – in print and on screen.
I started writing about sex because I was tired of pretending. Tired of being polite. Tired of whispering in bathrooms about what I actually wanted in bed.
I treated each article like a diary entry, marking those moments in my dating life that had me scratching my head, or leaving me sexually unfulfilled, or too fulfilled, just with the wrong guy.
At first, writing about sex felt terrifying, but the messages I received from women told me everything I needed to know. They didn’t want me to hold back anything. They wanted more – more truth, more humour. And like old episodes of SATC, that was easy because I was living it.
But, of course, with honesty comes backlash. I’ve been trolled by grown men on YouTube and social media, accused of corrupting women, encouraging cheating and, worst of all, daring to talk about pleasure as if it’s something women are entitled to. (Which, by the way, we absolutely are.) What I’ve come to realise is that women talking about sex – not for male titillation but for their own empowerment – still makes people uncomfortable. It’s not the sex that offends them. It’s the agency.
At an orgasm retreat I attended (yes, really!), the focus was to ‘unlearn’ the idea that sex should revolve around what men want rather than what women need. We were told to stop playing nice in the bedroom. To stop doing what was expected and instead demand that our desire be taken seriously and given priority.
Yes, I’ll keep writing the stuff that makes some people cringe and others feel seen. What I’m hoping is the creators of And Just Like That will give us the unfiltered, deliciously captivating truth about sex and dating. We don’t want safe. We want Samantha.
