Cynthia Nixon Mistakenly Thought Kristin Scott Thomas Was Going to Play Charlotte in the “Sex and the City ”Pilot

Cynthia Nixon initially thought British actress Kristin Scott Thomas was playing Charlotte in Sex and the City.

Nixon, 58, joined the actual Charlotte, Kristin Davis, 60, on the most recent episode of her Sex and the City rewatch podcast, Are You a Charlotte?, where she explained the hilarious case of mistaken identity that briefly led her to believe she would be appearing opposite Thomas in the show’s 1998 pilot.

“Sarah [Jessica Parker] and I knew each other quite well. We'd worked together a bunch of times, and we were always auditioning for the same parts and stuff when we were kids. And Kim [Cattrall] I knew a little bit,” Nixon said.

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At the time, however, Nixon had never met Davis, who was then based in L.A. and was best known for her portrayal of Brooke Armstrong Campbell on Melrose Place.

“I didn't know who you were,” Nixon told Davis, “but I looked at the way you spelled your first name with an 'i,' which is unusual — with two is. And I basically — I decided you were Kristin Scott Thomas.”

“I was like, it must be Kristin — that must be Kristin Scott Thomas,” she added.

“You must have been really disappointed,” Davis joked.

Nixon admitted that at the time she wasn’t all that familiar with Thomas either. The British actress was then best known in the U.S. for her BAFTA-winning role in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1996) and her Academy Award-nominated performance in The English Patient (1996).

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It’s possible that Davis and Thomas’ unusual spelling of their first names wasn’t the only reason Nixon thought a British actress would play Charlotte. The English journalist character played by Sarah Wynter in the first episode of Sex and the City was actually named “Charlotte” in Candace Bushnell’s 1996 book. Davis’s character, meanwhile, was an amalgamation of several other characters who appeared throughout the book and the New York Observer columns on which it was based.

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“That's adorable that you thought you were going to do the pilot of Sex and the City with Kristin Scott Thomas,” Davis told Nixon. “I mean, I wish I was Kristin Scott Thomas.”

“I don't wish you were,” Nixon replied. “No. I’m glad you’re you.”

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