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Sex and the Sweetie
She disparages marriage, laughs like a party girl and could not care less about poor Billy Campbell, so she's no real-life Charlotte - Kristin Davis is awfully nice.
By: Lori Lundquist

"I think Larry Sanders started it all."

So says Sex And The City star Kristin Davis when asked if there's some glory in her show being the grande dame in HBO's unequaled stable of cutting-edge, critic-slaying series.

"I really don't think that HBO would've felt confident about starting up all those shows without having had what they considered to be success with Larry Sanders," says the actress, who guest-starred on the show in 1993. "They didn't care if it was a hit or not. They liked it and the critics liked it and that whet their appetite for having more original programs."

Fair enough -- but even Davis has to admit that, as its fifth season gets underway, Sex is every bit as fierce, fresh and funny as it was from the get-go. She just doesn't do it right away.

"Actually, we were just joking the other day about the pilot," she says instead, cracking herself up at the memory. "The pilot was not a funny show. It was horrible in a lot of ways! No one knew what was going on and we had only one group scene that I remember. It was kind of hell. It had horrible lighting and it was really unpleasant and there was no vibe ... just like a little hint of what the show could be.

"But I agree," she finally admits, "It is miraculous and I credit (executive producer) Michael Patrick King all the way. He took over for Darren (Star) when Darren went off to do his other shows, and he just brought such depth with him. He took a lot of risks in terms of our direction and that's a hard thing to do with a hit."

An equal miracle is that, on a show starring four beautiful, dynamic women -- each of whom has had to step aside while the other's character takes her time in the spotlight -- "the girls" are famously, publicly devoted to one another.

"A 'happy set' is not really how I would describe it, though," Davis says. "That old-fashioned adage 'death is easy, comedy is hard' is true. It's very hard. And so when people say 'Oh, you must have so much fun!' Well we do ... but it's hard-work fun. It's not happy-go-lucky fun. When you're in a hit TV show, it's like an arranged marriage -- you didn't pick the people, but you're stuck with them. I'm just so thankful that we each respect each other and we love each other -- not for the fun so much."

On that subject, there is another not-so- fun issue that needed to be handled regarding the show's so-called "fifth star" -- New York City. The devastating events of September 11 occurred after the final show of the fourth season was already in the can.

"We're a comedy, so I don't think that we feel like we can address it head-on in any way that would do it justice," Davis considers. "And we would never want to upset (anyone) or reinvigorate the wounds. But we are trying to portray women who actually live in the city -- contrary to popular belief (she laughs long and loud). And we all went through a lot last year, all the characters, even separate from the events of the world. So we were already emotionally going to be packing ourselves up and moving on, and that happens to be where the city is now. So it's all really seamless."

Unlike the life of poor Charlotte York, the disheartened new divorcee that Davis plays on the show. At the end of season four, Charlotte was struggling to accept the end of her marriage and offered to let Sarah Jessica Parker's newly-unengaged Carrie Bradshaw pawn her own pricey wedding set to buy an apartment.

But, as longtime fans well know, it ain't always over when its over for the SATC ladies. So what's the truth about Trey (Kyle MacLachlan)?

"I'm not too sure, to tell you the truth," Davis says. (At interview time, she was still shooting the new season's first episode.) "I know that Kyle will be around, but I am not sure in what sense -- like that doesn't mean we're reconciling. So I think it is certainly unresolved. It's unresolved and it needs to be resolved, let's put it that way. IT'S A PROBLEM!"

Does she wish for any particular outcome?

"I'll tell ya," the actress says, "we all completely lose our sense of separation. All last year I was like, 'PLEEEASE! KYLE CAN'T LEAVE!' -- which is also exactly how Charlotte felt about Trey. But by the end of the year, once we'd wrapped and everything, I was like, 'Huh. Maybe it is time for her to move on. Which is exactly what she is thinking: "Maybe it is time for me to move on.'"

"I can always tell from my own feelings," Davis says of Charlotte's story line. "Like, if I'm not feeling excited about something that she is supposed to be excited about, chances are high that it will change. Like there was a time, a long time ago, that she was going to get pregnant too. And they didn't do it. And I'm so glad, because when they first said it, I was like 'Yeah yeah yeah!' because that's what she wanted, right? And then they said, 'Oh, and then there's going to be Cynthia and she's going to get pregnant and we're going to have her ... ' and I was like, ' Well huh. That seems ... odd.'"

Could it be, then, that Davis really is a lot like her character, despite her frequent protestations?

"That's what I said for like the first two years, because that was all anybody talked about," she chuckles. People talked to me like I was her. I wanted to wear a sign: 'I'M NOT HER!' But as time goes on, I'm like 'Hmmmmm ... I'm not really all that different.'"

For example?

"You know, like sometimes they bring me clothes for photo shoots, and I'm like, 'I can't wear thaaaaat!' So I think, 'Oh no! I'm not a prude!' And then I realize that, to a lot of people, I probably am."

But you can't accuse her of being old-fashioned. For all of Charlotte's race to the altar, the Colorado-born, South Carolina-raised Davis admits, "Someone would really have to talk me into getting married. I've felt that way my whole life -- I don't really know why. My knee-jerk response is that, in South Carolina where I grew up, at the time they were still very focused on getting married. The girls were all debutantes, which is presenting yourself to society as being a 'marriageable girl' and people would get engaged in college and get married when they got out. I never saw myself doing that, even back then. My parents were not really in line with that either -- they were a little bit more bohemian and maybe that's why, too. But I was always just, 'Ohhhh, I don't think that is for me!'"

Instead of lifelong love, Davis discovered acting during her college years. "I did a commercial for the State of New Jersey when I was at Rutgers," she recalls. "It was for New Jersey tourism, and I went up in a hot-air balloon with another student from Rutgers and we talked about the joys of New Jersey." After graduation, she took work where she could find it, including the Sanders gig and a stint as an R.N. on General Hospital. And then along came a little potboiler called Melrose Place.

As America quickly took notice of the dark-haired, doe-eyed beauty, Davis' character, neurotic rich girl Brooke Armstrong, managed to achieve a dubious coup. By capturing -- then crushing -- the heart of kind-hearted cutie Billy Campbell, played by kind-hearted cutie Andrew Shue, Brooke made viewers loathe her even more than Heather Locklear's scheming Amanda Woodward.

"Oh Billy ... whatever!" says Davis with playful disgust. "I was so sick of hearing about Billy! People were always shouting at me about Billy! I never want to hear that name again!"

But she does realize that the show was her springboard.

"In the beginning, I enjoyed it very much," she says. "I was happy to have a job of any kind that lasted more than a week, and I was happy to be part of a show that I enjoyed as a viewer before I was on it. But Darren Star hired me ... and then he left to do Central Park West. When he was there, he thought of my character as being kind of funny -- in a warped way, in a manipulative way, but still kind of funny. And when he left, they were like, 'Oh God! We gotta think up things for her.' And the things that they thought up were very not funny."

So Davis took her "death" in stride, then got a taste of just how much of an impression she had made on the nighttime soap.

"Right away I got a bunch of offers for all kids of bizarre versions of (Melrose). They were still popular then and people were trying to come up with the next one and I had to turn them all down. I had a really smart manager then, who I still have, and he said, 'If we don't turn them down now, that's what you're going to do forever.' He said, 'I really think that some comedy would be good,' and I was like 'Ohhh, I can never get a sitcom!' 'Cause I used to test for sitcoms all the time and they would always say, 'She's not funny enough.' Always!"

Her manager stuck to his guns and eventually his client hit the comedy jackpot, landing a guest role as one of Seinfeld's most memorable girlfriends: Hers was the toothbrush that took a tumble into the toity. The episode proved Davis' comic talents ... and flushed out an old friend too.

"Darren (Star) always perceived me as funny and then he saw Seinfeld and went, 'Ohhhhh that's great for her! She's so funny!' And that's right around the time that they were starting to cast Sex & The City. So he said, 'Why don't you come in for Carrie?' 'Cause they didn't have Sarah Jessica yet. So I read the script and Carrie on the page -- in the pilot -- was more like Samantha is now. She was very tough. She swore like every other sentence and she smoked all the time. And I was like, 'I can't ... I'll get horrible reviews.'"

"It was very clear that I should play Charlotte ... to me, anyway," Davis continues. "And it also made sense to Darren. And when they did get Sarah Jessica signed on, they said, 'Do you want to go for Charlotte? And I was like, 'Absolutely!' Because I knew that with her on it wouldn't be like Melrose In The City. I felt with her it would be different and smart ... and I knew that she was a New Yorker and a unique, smart woman."

The rest is television history, despite her earlier assessment of the pilot. The show has remained a ratings smash since its second season, and its stars are year-round media darlings courtesy of stuff like their 2001 Emmy® victory, a SAG award for best ensemble cast, Cynthia Nixon's protest arrest and Sarah Jessica Parker's mysterious marital status (though the mystery appears to have been solved by the May announcement of her pregnancy).

And then there is the tantalizing matter of Ms. Davis' love life, which often earns her more press that any of the other stars (in the past year alone, she has been linked to actors Alec Baldwin and Jeff Goldblum).

"I'm the single one!" she wails of her share of the spotlight. "Do I have a sense of humor about it? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I find it kind of weird and fascinating, and I feel very separate from it. I mean they never get it right, for one thing. And even when they get something semi-right, it's usually way after the fact. It's hysterical!"

Hysterical enough that she might let this reporter get it all the way right? No such luck.

"I'll tell you why ... you can write this instead," she offers. "In the first season, when we were about to come on the air, there was this very, very nice writer for the New York Times who's a big fan. And she was going to do this whole thing on us -- and at this point we really needed the press, 'cause no one knew who we were, what we were about, whatever. And she called me in a panic. She had already talked to the other three girls and she called me, completely panicking, and said, 'Kristin, you have to help me! Because my whole article is about relating your show to real life, but I can't do it because none of your girlfriends will help me because they are all in significant relationships! I need dating stories!' And I said, 'Well what do you need?!' And she said, 'I need your worst dating story and your best dating story.'

"I felt so bad for her and I thought that what she wanted to do was a wonderful thing, you know, trying to say that we were trying to show life like it is, only funnier. So I tell her a bad dating story. I don't tell her names, but it was about two men and they were friends and it was mean and bad and it was probably the meanest thing that anyone had ever done to me. Not like breaking my heart or anything. Just mean.

"So I tell her the story -- this had happened like a year before maybe and I was completely fine with it. It wasn't still upsetting me or I never would have told her! But I tell her the story and I don't think anything more about it. I'm like, 'Hey, at least I had a story to tell!'"

"So her story comes out in the New York Times. And, like six months later, it gets back to me that these men have read it and can't believe that I told the story -- even though I didn't tell their names -- and they will never forgive me and have decided that I am just really immature because I am not over it yet. And I am like, 'This is hysterical!' I mean, first of all, they were the mean ones. Second of all, I am too over it. And third of all, you can't get away with anything these days!"

Source: Channel Guide

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