Kristin Davis revealed one fear the Sex & The City cast had.
Hollywood’s approach to on-screen nudity has evolved significantly over the years, but back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, it was a far more sensitive topic—especially for the stars of Sex and the City.
Davis, who played Charlotte York on the hit HBO series, recently opened up about the cast’s concerns regarding nudity while filming the show between 1998 and 2004.
Speaking on her Are You a Charlotte? podcast, she shared that she and her co-stars were “scared” about appearing nude on-screen, fearing it could harm their careers.
“Look at how people present themselves now,” Davis said.
“It’s totally normal to have almost everyone on a red carpet in a sheer dress where, potentially, their nipples are showing. Like, this never would have happened back in the olden days.”
She recalled how intimidating the idea of nudity was at the time, saying, “We were scared about showing our nipples on the show. We were like, ‘Oh my god. They want us to show our nipples.’ We were so worried about it. Right? Like, would we be shunned? Would we be, you know, cast out … by the film world or whatever, which is kind of insane to think about.”
Davis starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kim Cattrall in Sex and the City, later reprising her role in two feature films and HBO Max’s revival And Just Like That, which is set to return for season three in 2025.
While nudity was a major concern for Davis and her co-stars, Sarah Jessica Parker had a clear boundary from the beginning.
In a 2023 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Parker revealed that she had expressed her discomfort with nudity when she first signed on to the series.
“I shared with [creator Darren Star] that my only concern — I thought the script was really interesting, and really exciting, and different, and fresh, and I’d never seen anything like that,” Parker said.
“And the only thing I said to him that I was concerned about was that I just didn’t feel comfortable doing nudity,” she added.
“And I suspected that if it wasn’t in the pilot, it would be part of a series, that it felt like it was legitimately going to be talked about. And he said, ‘Don’t do it, then. I don’t care. Don’t do nudity.’ He said, ‘We’ll have other actors. If they feel comfortable doing it, they’ll do it, but you do not have to.’”
Parker emphasized that her decision was based on personal comfort rather than judgment, saying, “I was just shy. I never had any judgments about actors who do go nude. I just never felt comfortable being nude. I didn’t think it would change perception of me or kind of create opportunities that I might not be interested in. I was shy.”
With Sex and the City’s legacy continuing through And Just Like That, Davis and Parker’s reflections highlight just how much Hollywood’s attitude toward on-screen nudity has evolved over the past two decades.
