LOS ANGELES — Director and actor Zoe Lister-Jones is calling “Sex and the City” star Chris Noth “a sexual predator” in the wake of a new report that cited two women who accused him of sexual assault, which Noth has denied.
Actor Chris Noth in 2018. Noth, 67, starred in “Sex and the City” and appears briefly in its newly released sequel, “And Just Like That …” Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP, file
After the Hollywood Reporter published the women’s allegations against Noth on Thursday, Lister-Jones (“New Girl,” “Life in Pieces”) shared hers. She pegged her statement to her gut reaction to the shocking death of Noth’s character, Mr. Big, in the premiere episode of HBO Max’s new “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That …”
Lister-Jones, 39, said she “felt relieved” about Mr. Big’s fate because “she couldn’t separate the actor from the man.” Noth, she said, “capitalized on the fantasy that women believed Mr. Big represented.”
“I hadn’t thought of this man for so many years, and yet there was virility to my language that came from somewhere deep and buried,” she wrote Thursday on Instagram.
The “Band Aid” and “How It Ends” director accused Noth of being “consistently sexually inappropriate” with a fellow female producer at a New York nightclub he owned and where Lister-Jones also worked when she was in her 20s.
She also accused the 67-year-old star of being “drunk on set” when she guest starred on “Law & Order” when he returned to the show as a detective after working on “Sex and the City.” According to IMDb, the two worked together on a 2005 episode of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”
“During my interrogation scene he had a 22 oz. beer under the table that he would drink in between takes. In one take he got close to me, sniffed my neck, and whispered, ‘You smell good,’ ” she wrote. “I didn’t say anything. My friend at the club never said anything. It’s so rare that we do.”
A representative for Noth did not comment Friday when reached by The Times. And representatives for NBC’s “Law & Order” series did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lister-Jones noted that part of being a woman “is taking a certain amount of pride” in “knowing how to handle yourself in these situations.
“In denying their impact as a means of survival. And burying the feelings that come with the transgressions that we have been taught are simply to be expected,” she wrote.
She said that her experiences are small relative to the accounts of alleged sexual assault the women shared with the Hollywood Reporter. Their allegations prompted the fitness-bike company Peloton to pull a viral ad starring Noth.
“Navigating predation at any level is a burden all women have to bear. And for the most part there is no accountability, and no consequence,” Lister-Jones continued.
“Chris Noth capitalized on the fantasy that women believed Mr. Big represented,” she wrote. “And those fantasies often create environments where emotional confusion thrives. Perhaps Big’s death is the communal grief we must all face in mourning that fantasy, in releasing that male archetype we as women have been fed through popular culture, and confronting its dark and pervasive underbelly.”
She concluded: “(expletive) Mr. Big.”
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