SJP “never responded”

I wrote yesterday about Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of the new issue of PEOPLE promoting her new GAP collaboration. PEOPLE’s initial post about SJP was focused on her kids and her marriage, a piece to butter up the MiniVan Majority. Later on in the day, PEOPLE followed with another article, this time centred around SJP’s beef with Kim Cattrall…only she’s saying there’s no beef, no feud, “no fight”. Because she never participated in one. 

The interview happened before this past weekend, when Kim went nuclear on SJP on Instagram, so it doesn’t specifically address Kim’s latest accusations but rather focuses on what went down last year, after it was reported that the third Sex And The City movie wasn’t happening because Kim was a selfish bitch who ruined it for everyone – that was the leaked narrative that Kim’s been pushing back against. Here’s how SJP describes the situation to PEOPLE: 

“I never talked about it, except [to say] that some of us were disappointed [about the movie not happening],” Parker says in this week’s issue, on stands Friday. “But I never responded to the conversation Kim had with Piers Morgan, where she said things that were really hurtful about me. We had this experience and it was amazing, and nothing will ever be like it. We had a connection with an audience, and we had a connection with the city and with this crew, and we got to tell these crazy stories with each other. So I don’t want to mess with that. I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing that part. So there was no fight; it was completely fabricated, because I actually never responded. And I won’t, because she needed to say what she needed to say, and that is her privilege.”

So in SJP’s mind, she’s the one who’s been attacked. All she ever did was appreciate the experience they all had with each other on the show and express disappointment that the third movie would not be going ahead. And then the rest of it was all “fabricated”, which is a classic celebrity move: blame the media. 

Here’s the thing though – let’s say it actually was all fabricated and that she had nothing to do with how this fight got started. If that were the case, the fabrication still villainised one of her former colleagues as the fabrication targeted Kim and spared SJP. In claiming that she “never responded” then, SJP isn’t lying. She hasn’t responded. But WHY hasn’t she responded is the better question. The movie deal fell apart. She’s allowed to be disappointed about it. But when the reporting about why the movie deal fell apart positioned Kim as the big bad who killed it and all we had on record from SJP is that she was disappointed and silence on the issue about whether or not it was Kim’s fault, that kind of “not responding” is exactly the intended response, non? 

And that’s exactly why Kim was enraged. Because that’s the very definition of throwing someone under the bus! If you’re Kim and you’re being blamed for the movie’s demise and all you hear is your former co-star moaning about it in public but not bothering to clarify that it just wasn’t meant to be and it’s no one’s fault and not sticking up for you, wouldn’t you feel like you were stuck under the bus?!? 

SJP “never responded”. And she’s right. She never responded. As Justin Timberlake, someone else who’s familiar with throwing people under the bus, sings in his song Say Something:

Sometimes the greatest way to say something is to say nothing at all