To promote the new season of And Just Like That, Kristin Davis gave an absolutely charming interview to the Telegraph. I normally wouldn’t consider an interview “charming,” but I was charmed by Davis’s honesty, realness and positive energy. She’s a single mom by choice, she adopted two Black children, and she’s not the prissy, uptight Charlotte in real life. She manages to navigate tricky conversations with grace, conversations about “woke” whatever, race, ageism, cosmetic work and Kim Cattrall. Some highlights:

The original ‘Sex and the City’: ‘People forget how shocking it was. Four women over the age of 30 starring in a show where men are secondary and we’re talking about relationships and sex openly.’

On the criticism that these characters should be left in the past: ‘Why shouldn’t our lives still be interesting? Society expects you to diminish yourself as you age. But why should we? As Mary Steenburgen [the 70-year-old Oscar-winning actress] said the other day, “I’m still alive.”’

On the criticisms of how ‘woke’ AJLT is: ‘I’m so tired of that word. I feel like it has been weaponised. And it’s unfortunate – because it really just means being educated about what other people are going through. Why is that a bad thing?’

She never married: ‘I think it was a reaction to the South [she grew up in South Carolina, the only child of a data analyst and a psychology professor], where they’re very, very focused on getting married soon. There’s pressure. My parents were not like that. [They] were much more hippie and I was more independent. I remember saying very young: “I am never getting married.” I was like, “Down with the patriarchy!” I did not want to stay [in the South] with all the blonde people. I’m sorry. No offence.’

On Kim Cattrall’s absence from AJLT: ‘You have to respect people’s wishes. I’m not gonna waste energy on it. I can’t change anybody. I do understand fans’ feelings – that they’re upset… I wish I could fix it, but I can’t, it’s not in my power.’

Her children Gemma and Wilson are now 11 and five. ‘I’d always thought about adopting. But it took me forever to actually do it. They give you this form and there are a bunch of races listed there and you’re supposed to check the ones you want. I thought that was nuts so I just checked “any”.’ She has become very attuned to any hints of racism. ‘People make crazy comments. They want to know why my tall daughter doesn’t play basketball. And when you have a boy, it’s really frightening to look at the news.’ Home, she says, is ‘hectic’. ‘They’re very sporty right now. My daughter’s running track and my son is obsessed with basketball and soccer…”

She barely dates: ‘I have a lot of mom friends who want to set me up, I can’t deal with it… I’ve tried because life is short, right? Sometimes you think “That might work.” But it’s a challenge… It’s an energy issue. Twice I tried new relationships: one with someone I had known for many years, someone brilliant in our industry… He got upset with me that I hadn’t paid attention to something work-wise that he’d done and I was like, “Dude”.’

She talks openly about the cosmetic work she’s done: ‘It’s hard to be confronted with your younger self at all times. And it’s a challenge to remember that you don’t have to look like that. The internet wants you to – but they also don’t want you to. They’re very conflicted…’ At first she just tried Botox. ‘I was super-excited I didn’t have to have my lateral lines. But I didn’t do anything else for a long time.’ Then came the fillers: ‘I have done fillers and it’s been good and I’ve done fillers and it’s been bad. I’ve had to get them dissolved and I’ve been ridiculed relentlessly. And I have shed tears about it. It’s very stressful.’

Now, she says, she has a more laissez-faire attitude to the whole thing. ‘It’s whatever. I can’t keep it up. I don’t have time. You’re trusting doctors [but] people personally blame us when it goes wrong – [as if] I jabbed a needle in my face…’ She is referring to some work on her lips. ‘No one told me it didn’t look good for the longest time. But luckily I do have good friends who did say eventually. The thing is you don’t smile at yourself in the mirror. Who smiles at themselves in the mirror? Crazy people.’

[From The Telegraph]

She also tosses off the fact that she “gave up drinking in her early 20s” because she was an alcoholic back then. Which I didn’t know, but she makes it sound like it’s something that everyone knows? She also says that she has it in her AJLT contract that she gets to keep all of Charlotte’s clothes. Which is amazing. Basically, she just sounds like a normal, stressed-out single mom and working mom. She barely has time to date, she’s experimented with cosmetic stuff, she’s just trying to get through the day, basically. Anyway, she seems cool.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.