| Samantha Jones | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Pilot (episode 1.01) |
| Last appearance | Sex and the City 2 |
| Created by | Candace Bushnell |
| Portrayed by | Kim Cattrall |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Sam, 'Jonesy' |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Public Relations |
| Family | unnamed parents two siblings[1] |
Samantha Jones is a fictional character on the HBO-produced television series Sex and the City. She is portrayed by actress Kim Cattrall.
Contents |
| “ | I don't believe in the Democratic party or the Republican party, I just believe in parties. | ” |
| “ | Fuck me badly once, shame on you, fuck me badly twice, shame on me. | ” |
Samantha is one of four single friends portrayed in the series. A nymphomaniac narcissist, most of her storylines revolve around the frequent sex she has. She is outspoken and a self-proclaimed "try-sexual" (meaning she'll try anything at least once). In the book's prequel series, it is revealed that Carrie met Samantha first.
Samantha is the eldest of the four friends (in the final scene of Sex and the City: The Movie, her 50th birthday is celebrated), and she has her own public-relations company. Not much is known about Samantha's younger years, except that she came from more of a working class background, and she spent most of her teenage years selling Dilly bars at Dairy Queen to earn pocket money. Season 3 implies that she has at least two siblings, when she mentions that at her age, her mother "was saddled with three kids and a drunk husband." She later mentions partying at Studio 54 during its heyday, implying she moved sometime in the mid to late-1970s from wherever she grew up to New York City. She has mentioned having had at least two abortions, one of which occurred while she was in college.
In the early part of the series, she lives on the Upper East Side, but ends up moving to an expensive apartment in the Meatpacking District, after one of her late-night visitors lets in a mugger who attacks one of her older female neighbors.
One of Samantha's best qualities is her loyalty to her friends. When Carrie confesses to her that she's having an affair with her married ex-boyfriend "Mr. Big," and is cheating on her boyfriend, Aidan, Samantha tells her that judging is not her style, and offers her support. Although she fights with Charlotte a few times, they always manage to get past their differences and make up. Despite having trouble adjusting to Miranda having a child, she willingly gives up a coveted hair appointment and sends Miranda in her place, staying behind to babysit and give her friend a much-needed break. Although Miranda is usually considered Carrie's best friend, Samantha is shown to be closer with Carrie on several occasions, such as in the first film when Carrie asks Samantha to be her maid of honor. Also, Carrie hates an engagement ring that Miranda picks out for Aidan to give Carrie, but Carrie loves the replacement ring he gets her, which was selected by Samantha.
In the show's last season, Samantha is diagnosed with breast cancer. She faces the challenge head-on, playing with her look by wearing outrageous wigs, hats, and headscarves after she loses her hair to chemotherapy. In one of the final episodes, she gives a speech for a cancer benefit dinner, and receives a standing ovation for removing her wig onstage and admitting that she was suffering with hot flashes. The audience appreciated her candour and honesty, and many of the women in the audience stood up and removed their own wigs.
Four years later, Samantha has moved to Los Angeles with Smith to further his acting career; he's now playing a doctor on a popular daytime drama. Samantha, who used to be so sexually free, finds herself attracted to a hunky exhibitionist neighbor, Dante, whom she regularly sees nude when he takes a shower or has sex with various women. Dante could be considered the male version of Samantha. While she remains faithful to Smith, she finds herself questioning whether or not her strained relationship with him should be continued. She eventually tells him she "loves herself more than she loves him," and breaks up with him. Our last view of Samantha is her celebrating her 50th birthday and toasting to the next fifty.
Samantha is approached by an Arab sheikh to devise a PR campaign for his business, and he offers to fly her and her friends on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi. While in Abu Dhabi, Samantha's hormonal drugs are confiscated under UAE law; her body remains unaroused by Australian men in Speedo swimwear. When the girls are having a picnic they meet a Danish architect named Rikard Spirt (Max Ryan). Samantha calls him "Lawrence of my labia". Meeting him later that evening out with the girls addressing him as "Dick Spurt" and graciously declines his offer for a drink because of her devotion to her friends and "girls night out" but agrees to meet for a late dinner the next evening. While on that date with Rikard, Samantha is detained for having sex on the beach, and claims to have been just kissing. With the Sheik's intervention, Samantha is released, leaving her with a permanent police record. The PR meeting is cancelled, and their luxurious perks are no longer paid for. They quickly pack their bags and attempt to leave but having to go back to the "souk" to retrieve Carrie's passport, causes a scene after being accused of taking a bag and the contents (including a long strip of condoms) falls out. After being helped by Muslim women in traditional wear, they leave Abu Dhabi and return to the USA. At the end of the movie Samantha has sex with Rikhard in "the land of the free and home of the hormones", the United States, at an East Hampton sand dune, on the hood of his Mercedes.
Samantha's main love is men—many of them. Over the course of the series, she sleeps with plenty of interesting characters, including a man who will only "swing" with her if she takes an HIV test, a college student from the Midwest with the same name (Sam Jones) who is eager to lose his virginity, a guy with "funky spunk", and a trainer from her gym who brands her by shaving her pubic hair into a lightning bolt. She never lets the men stay for long, usually requiring them to leave "an hour after [she] climaxes." One of her sexual antics includes making a sex-tape to disprove tabloids' claims that she is a fag hag. She once said that she frequently loses underwear because she leaves them at the guys' places and never returns. She even slept with her good friend Charlotte's brother, prompting an angry Charlotte to call Samantha's vagina "the hottest spot in town: it's always open."
Samantha rarely dates men more than once or twice. She does have a few "serious" relationships throughout the run of the series:
Samantha meets a man named James (James Goodwin) in a jazz bar at the end of season one. Unusually for Samantha, she doesn't have sex with him immediately, taking a leaf instead from Charlotte's book, because she felt he was a man she would marry. After declaring that she was in love with him, the two finally have sex, only for Samantha to discover that James was seriously under-endowed, to the point where she could not experience any physical pleasure. In the last episode of season one, ("Oh Come All Ye Faithful") she tells Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda that he is only three inches long when hard, and that she doesn't even receive any pleasure out of giving him a blow job because his penis is so small. Though she tries to work through it, she eventually ends things with him when they attend a couples' counselling session. She confesses she is unable to feel someone as small as a baby carrot, to which he replies angrily by saying that maybe her vagina is too big.
In a funny counterpoint to her predicament with James, in the second-season episode "Ex and the City," Samantha meets Mr. Too Big, who warns her of his huge endowment as he undresses. Samantha squeals with delight as the story segues to another character. Later in the episode, when Samantha reappears, she is slowly guiding Mr. Too Big between her legs. After much hesitation, she seems to finally relax while drawing him in (she thinks), only to be asked if he can start. A shocked and fearful Samantha pushes him away with her foot on his chest and begs off the encounter. At the end of this episode she unexpectedly yells "I miss James!" while her friends goofishly sing 'Memories' in a crowded restaurant - the exclamation is tearful suggesting that her feelings for James may have been legitimate.
In season four, Samantha flirts with lesbianism, entering into a brief but serious relationship with a woman: an artist named Maria (Sonia Braga). The girls are completely shocked by this (moreso that she is in a relationship than the fact that it's with a woman) and Charlotte proclaims, "She's not a lesbian, she probably just ran out of men!" Samantha feels she is not a relationship person, and she initially only wants to be friends with Maria. Maria tells Samantha she cannot continue being just friends with her, and Samantha decides to take a chance and kisses Maria. Samantha seems intrigued about learning the act of pleasing another woman, thus learning more about her own sexuality. Once the sex begins to dwindle and they spend a lot of time talking, Samantha begins to tire of their relationship. Maria also becomes upset when Samantha's sexual past catches up with them. Samantha ultimately ends up missing men too much and, although Maria decides to try strap-on sex, the two break up due to Maria's belief that Samantha has "intimacy issues."
Later in season four, Samantha meets and falls in love with hotel magnate Richard Wright (James Remar). Though the two seemed well-matched, as they both liked sleeping around and are uninterested in relationships, Samantha finds herself becoming increasingly attached to Richard. The two eventually commit to a monogamous relationship. However, Samantha is heart broken when she catches him cheating on her. After giving Richard a second chance, she decides to end the relationship when she realizes she can't trust him. In the last season, she runs into Richard while out at a party with her new boyfriend, Smith, and Samantha and Richard go upstairs to have sex. During intercourse, Samantha is seen looking uninterested and even not enjoying being with Richard. Smith waits for her downstairs, knowing what she has done, and she breaks down in his arms, apologizing to him.
Samantha sees a 28 year old waiter/aspiring actor (Jason Lewis) while dining with the girls at a new, hip restaurant called "Raw." She later returns to the restaurant alone, with the sole mission of taking him home; she succeeds, outlasting numerous other women who are there for the same purpose. At first it seems he is to be just another notch on her bedpost, and she doesn't even know his name, referring to him as "Smith" to her Jones in elaborate sexual scenarios they enact. She is turned off by learning anything personal about him, such as that he is a recovering alcoholic. But she finds she is enjoying her time with him so much that she keeps seeing him.
Seeing that he is broke and struggling, Samantha uses her PR skills to jump-start Jerry's modeling and acting career, and, once she learns his name, changes it to Smith Jerrod. Samantha likes that he is not intimidated by her success (in contrast to Carrie's ex-boyfriend, Jack Berger), and with her assistance, he quickly becomes a celebrity. He first gains attention when he models naked in an Absolut Vodka ad in Times Square, in which he appears as the "Absolut Hunk." [2] This publicity leads to a role in a Gus Van Sant film.
Reluctant at first to admit she cares about him, Samantha misses him while he is on location. Smith returns from his film and shows her true affection, which Samantha finds unsettling. (As she explains to Carrie, he tried to do something purely perverse to her in public: "He tried to hold my hand.") She ends up deliberately humiliating him by hooking up with ex-flame Richard while at a party she went to with Smith. After a quick bout of clearly meaningless sex with Richard, during which he talks about himself, Samantha seeks out Smith, who has been waiting for her to realize she made a mistake and come back. She tearfully confesses that she hates what she just did to him. Eventually, she begins referring to Smith as her boyfriend. It appears that the two live together, since Smith refers to her place as "home," and he has keys to the apartment.
Smith supports Samantha through her brush with cancer, even shaving his hair when her hair began falling out, and then shaving hers. Samantha has no sexual libido during chemotherapy and encourages Smith to have sex with anyone he wants while he is in Canada filming his next movie. Smith refuses, comparing her situation to winter: "just because the trees are bare doesn't mean they're dead." While he is away, he sends her unbloomed flowers with a message on the card reading "Looking forward to spring." She calls him to tell him she changed her mind about the sex with other women suggestion, and he tells her, "Cool," meaning he hasn't and he won't. Smith returns to New York in the middle of the night, flying back after their phone call to say that he loves her. Samantha replies that he "means more to [her] than any man [she's] ever known," which, for Samantha, is a huge statement. Their last scene together in the TV series shows the two having sex and Samantha enjoying herself; the previously unbloomed flowers have now begun to open. Four years later the pair are still together, with Samantha giving up her job and home to live in Los Angeles with him and be his publicist supporting his booming acting career. But Samantha has become restless with monogamy and resents that Smith's career has taken over her life. After a struggle with her weight and self control, Samantha eventually decides to end their relationship. She explains that she loves being single more than any relationship. As seen in the Sex and the City 2 movie, the two remain friends. Samantha returns to being her old self and enjoying sex with many men. She has trouble controlling her urges in Abu Dhabi and is even arrested for kissing someone in public.
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