Kristin Davis opened up about her dynamic with Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field.
“I also had my own journey with Pat that was rough in the beginning because she did not like my body,” Davis, 61, told former costar Evan Handler on the Thursday, October 15, episode of her “Are You a Charlotte?” podcast. “I think it’s fine now.”
Davis famously played Charlotte York-Goldenblatt on HBO’s Sex and the City, which ran for six seasons from 1998 to 2004, in addition to two feature films and the three-season And Just Like That revival decades later. Field, 85, was an already accomplished designer and stylist when she was tapped to oversee wardrobe on the tentpole series.
“Pat just has no filter, right? She just says stuff. Whatever is on her mind, she says,” Davis recalled. “She had come from a world where she was in charge of everything, right? She had her store, and if she did a fashion show, she hired the people. It was her vision without being watered down or changed or filtered or anything like that.”
While working on SATC, Davis claimed that Field “would just be just so frustrated with my curves.” (Field has not publicly addressed the claims. Us has reached out for comment.)
“At the time, when we started, 1998 or whatever it was, 1997, everything was straight, like straight,” Davis said. “I’ve never been straight, nothing, no amount of dieting. When I watch back … I was dieting, for sure.”
Davis remembered she was “just bones” and had “no breasts left” as a result of her diet, which seemingly impressed Field.
“She was like, ‘Great,’” Davis claimed. “I wasn’t eating any real food [besides M&M’s], but it wasn’t healthy. … I had read that ballet dancers smoke cigarettes and eat candy bars. I was like, ‘Well, if they can do it, I can do it.’ But, I wasn’t smoking a cigarette.”
Kristin Davis wears Charlotte’s wedding dress in ‘Sex and the City’ season 6. HBO/Everett Collection
According to Davis, her set experience with Field improved during the later seasons as Charlotte found love with Harry (Handler).
“When I watched our wedding, like, I love that dress,” she mused. “Everything’s working and I have hips and it’s fine, it fits [and] it’s good. I think she had to surrender that I was just going to be curvy, and it took some time. No amount of dieting [would change that].”
Kristin Davis’ role as Charlotte York on Sex and the City cemented her as a Hollywood star — but it wasn’t always easy for her to connect with the character. “We have very different lifestyles. I’m not married. I have never been married,” Davis, 58, said during the Monday, July 10, episode of the “Best […]
Handler, who noted that Davis was “gorgeous” during the show’s heyday, also felt self-conscious when Field dressed him in “ill-fitting” suits.
“I was heavier in my 40s, which means from Sex and the City through the first some seasons of Californication,” Handler, 65, recalled. “I don’t know why it took me ’til suddenly around 50 years old and I said, ‘What is this about?’ And, I slimmed down, you know? So, watching those episodes [of SATC], it’s like, ‘I had a gut.’”
