The author and Sarah Jessica Parker at a wrap party for “Sex and the City.”
The text from my cousin Beth read, “Casting needs extras for the upcoming 3rd season of ‘And Just Like That’!”
My body burned. Was it menopause or PTSD?
“Send in your headshot,” Beth texted, encouraging me to see if I could get a spot on the follow-up series to “Sex and the City.”
“No way,” I texted back, not wanting to be humiliated again.
My essays about what it was like to be the stand-in for Kristin Davis, who played Charlotte on “Sex and the City,” went viral a few years ago. As her stand-in for four years, I mimicked the positions she would use in each scene so that the production team could work out all of the technical kinks, like lighting and camera setup, before each scene was shot. I thought my job would be a stepping stone to getting a speaking part on the iconic HBO series, and then I’d land my big break. Instead, the experience paralyzed me.
Crew members made fun of my long nose, remarked on my big butt and boobs, and started a rumor that I had given a person in a senior position a blowjob, which all led up to an incident during the second episode of the show’s fourth season, entitled “The Real Me,” about Charlotte’s “depressed vagina.”
At the end of a long filming day, the crew duct-taped my feet to the stirrups of an exam table in a mock doctor’s office and took Polaroids as I tried to free myself. The crew laughed at the prank. I was horrified.
HBO responded to my Glamour Magazine piece about what happened that day with a statement that read, “We have always taken seriously our responsibility to create a safe environment for everyone working on our productions, and we are very disappointed to learn of Ms. Kristin’s experience 20 years ago.”
However, the stars of the show and its producers, including Sarah Jessica Parker, never commented on what I’d been through or reached out to me privately.
Now, years later, Beth wasn’t the only one suggesting that I submit my selfie to the “AJLT” casting team. More and more friends were texting me to give it a shot, but I told them all no. Still, I began to wonder if they might be right. I had so many unresolved issues from my original experience with the show, which had led to nightmares. Maybe this was what I needed to finally get some closure. My inner voice told me I had to go back to move forward. I submitted my headshot.
When I told my 14-year-old daughter Daisy I’d been booked, her jaw dropped. She had heard my stories about working in show business and couldn’t believe what I’d endured to secure a steady paycheck and to qualify for the Screen Actors Guild health insurance.
“Why would you return when you were mistreated?” she asked me. “I would never work with misogynists.”
She was just two months into her freshman year at New York City’s Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music and Art — which inspired the movie and TV series “Fame” — and she already knew her worth. I was so proud of her. And she had a point.
“There were good days,” I said, wanting Daisy to know life is full of complicated choices and that very few things are all one thing or the other.
I pulled out a cardboard box from underneath my bed and sorted through photos of me with Davis, Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall. I never would’ve guessed there had been any rifts between the show’s stars at that time — just like the producers and writers seemed not to know what happened to me.
The stars of “Sex and the City” and their respective stand-ins. From left to right: Kristin Davis, the author, Kim Cattrall, Amy Evans, Anne Coatney, Cynthia Nixon, Jen Rexford, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
I remembered when Davis gave me a silk butterfly dress, and the car rides we frequently shared over the 59th Street Bridge after a long day on set. As the sun rose, we talked of men, fame and our lives. My family had needed financial assistance from the government when I was growing up, and my mother, sister and I were homeless when I was 10, so working 30-60 hours a week on the iconic show made me feel like I had truly made it.
Even if I didn’t want Birkin bags, cosmopolitans and cupcakes, I wanted to maintain the relationships I was forming. I wanted what the four leads seemed to have with each other in a glittery city where adventures in love always seemed to be right around the corner… or the next episode.
The night before filming “AJLT,” I assured my youngest daughter, Clover, age 9, that I wouldn’t be nervous when I returned to the set. I told her I’d keep my emotions in check. That promise crumbled the moment I arrived on the Upper East Side at 5:30 a.m. to a huge holding space filled with dozens of extras. My heart palpitated.
After hair and makeup, we waited to be picked by production and taken to set a few blocks away. An hour later, a production assistant brought us to a side street and told us to wait. We stood (and after a while, sat) on the curb for hours. I noticed the crew looked different than when I worked on “Sex and the City.” There were now more women and people of color.
As the day wore on, the kind crew offered us water and snacks. The city, the noise and my fears all melted away as filming began and I was placed alongside several other extras on the sidewalk and told to walk back and forth toward the camera. I wasn’t sure the four main characters were even working that day, but I was grateful to be paid $215 for eight hours of work — much better than most of my freelance writing gigs.
The author (right) and Kristin Davis at Silvercup Studios in Queens while filming “Sex and the City.”
