Bobby Lee and Sarah Jessica Parker. Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/Shutterstock
And Just Like That star Bobby Lee opened up about how his experience filming with Sarah Jessica Parker led to him becoming sober.
“When I was using … this is the most horrifying thing … I was in Hawaii and I was blackout drunk and my agent calls and said ‘They need you in New York,’” Lee, 51, said on a Monday, July 24, episode of Rachel Bilson’s “Broad Ideas” podcast. “This is one of the reasons why I’m sober … I remember going [to set on And Just Like That] and being so high and drunk and when I was reading the script I couldn’t even understand what they were saying.”
Lee — who has now been sober for a year and a half — added: “It was a nightmare. I remember saying this is never going to happen again. … It’s insane how our disease gets, you know. That could’ve been a career ender.”
When Bilson, 41, asked if Parker, 58, knew something was going on while they were filming, Lee responded, “No … she was leaving to France the next day so I had to [keep filming.]”
Lee stars as Jackie, a friend of Carrie’s on the Sex in the City spinoff, and he appears on both seasons of the show. The second season of AJLT debuted in June, with new episodes airing Thursdays on Max. In addition to newer characters like Jackie, there will be more familiar faces with John Corbett due to return as Carrie’s former flame Aidan Shaw as well as Kim Cattrall set to reprise her role as Samantha Jones for one episode.
“It was, I think, a really nice idea to celebrate our 25th anniversary, to have this surprise appearance [of Samantha],” Parker said in a June interview with Good Morning America at the time. “And at least the content of it is still thus far a secret.”
In 2022, Parker previously told The Hollywood Reporter that Cattrall, 66, hadn’t been in talks to join the cast prior to its December 2021 premiere.
“We did not ask her to be [a] part of this because she made it clear that wasn’t something she wanted to pursue, and it no longer felt comfortable for us, and so it didn’t occur to us,” she explained at the time. “You’ve got to listen to somebody, and if they’re publicly talking about something and it doesn’t suggest it’s someplace they want to be, or a person they want to play, or an environment in which they want to be, you get to an age where you’re like, ‘Well, we hear that.’”
Despite her supposed feud with Parker, Cattrall announced in June 2023 that she would have a cameo in season 2 even though she didn’t appear in the show’s first season.
“It’s very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO saying, ‘What can we do?’” Cattrall revealed on an appearance on The View. “And I went, “Hmmm…let me get creative. I just thought, if I’m going to come back, I got to come back with that kind of Samantha style. I got to push it. And we did.”
Although fans are looking forward to Cattrall’s appearance, AJLT star Cynthia Nixon encouraged people to manage their expectations.
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“I worry that with all the build-up, people are going to wonder what all the fuss was about. It’s important to know that it is a very brief, very small cameo,” Nixon, 57, told London’s The Times in July.
