Kristin Davis says the costume designer behind S*x and the City did not like her body, and never pretended otherwise. On the October 15 episode of her podcast Are You a Charlotte?, co-hosted with former costar Evan Handler, Davis described a rough start with Patricia Field that took years to settle.
Davis said things are fine between them now. Getting there was another story.
Kristin Davis on Pat Field and Her Missing Filter
Davis played Charlotte York for six seasons, from 1998 to 2004, then returned for two movies and the And Just Like That revival. Field dressed her through the early years, and Davis told listeners the designer had no filter at all. According to Davis, Field simply said whatever was on her mind.
Field’s problem, as Davis tells it, was shape. Field wanted everything straight. Davis said she has never been straight, and no diet ever changed that.
She tried anyway. Davis said she spent filming on a diet made up mostly of M&M’s, to the point that she was down to bones with no breasts left. By her account, Field’s response to that version of her was approval.
Approval, for a body that had been starved into the right silhouette.
Pear-Shaped in the Tabloids, Skinny Next Door
Field was not the only voice. Davis has said before that the comparisons followed her outside the wardrobe trailer. In a 2023 Haute Living cover story, she recalled tabloids calling her pear-shaped while Sarah Jessica Parker got called skinny. Same show, same cast photos, two very different labels. She started working at 30 on Melrose Place, surrounded by what she described as stick-skinny blondes with blue eyes. Davis said the pressure was there from day one. She has also said she does not have the thick skin of costar Cynthia Nixon, and PEOPLE reported that she says she is in a better place now.
Davis does not frame the Field story as a feud. She frames it as a working relationship where one person had all the power over how the other looked on camera. A costume designer decides what fits. An actress in her first big role does not get much of a vote. Field spoke freely, and Davis absorbed it, because that was the job. Plenty of difficult professional relationships run on exactly that imbalance. One side says everything. The other side says nothing and diets.
How Charlotte’s Marriage to Harry Eased Things
Davis pinned the turning point on the writing. Once Charlotte settled into her marriage to Harry, the character Handler played, the battle over her shape faded. Davis summed up Field’s shift on the podcast: “I think she had to surrender that I was just going to be curvy.” Davis discussed her dynamic with Field during an episode of her podcast. The marriage that ended the fight belonged to his character.
Surrender is the telling word. Field did not apologize, at least not in anything Davis described. Davis did not win an argument. The story moved on, Charlotte became a wife instead of a woman dressing to land a man, and the curves stopped being a problem to solve.
Davis is 61 now, hosting a podcast about the role that made her, and saying out loud what she kept quiet in her thirties.
