It was the revival of the television series that had made him such an iconic character that was triggering for the two women.
Zoe, now 40, and Lily, now 31, both allege they were sexually assaulted by actor Chris Noth. The two women — who approached The Hollywood Reporter separately, months apart, and who do not know each other — said promotions and press reports of HBO Max’s Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That, in which Noth reprises his role as Mr. Big, stirred painful memories of incidents they say occurred in Los Angeles in 2004 and in New York in 2015, respectively. To protect their privacy, THR is allowing both women to use pseudonyms.
Lily, now a journalist, reached out to THR in August. “I’m not sure how you go about this sort of story and how you find the other victims,” she wrote in an email. THR heard from Zoe in October. She still works in the entertainment industry and is fearful of repercussions if her identity were known. But “seeing that he was reprising his role in Sex and the City set off something in me,” she says. “For so many years, I buried it.” She decided it was time “to try to go public with who he is.”
Contacted for comment, Noth sent THR a statement: “The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago — no always means no — that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
After graduating from college in 2004, Zoe — then 22 — moved to Los Angeles to work in an entry-level job for a high-profile firm where Noth and other celebrities regularly had business. “He would walk by my desk and flirt with me. He somehow got my number from the directory and was leaving messages on my work phone. My boss was like, ‘Mr. Big’s leaving messages on your voicemail,’” she says. That (now former) boss tells THR she witnessed Noth talking to Zoe at her desk. Zoe also let her listen to some “kind of flirty” voicemails from him. The ex-boss says she thought it odd that Noth, who was 49 at the time, had gotten Zoe’s number and left those messages but says she didn’t find it alarming. “This was peak Sex and the City,” she says. “He was like a god to us.”
Noth lived in New York but at one point, Zoe says, he invited her to come to the pool at a building in West Hollywood where he had an apartment. She told him she had a friend who lived in the same building and had been to the pool often. That August, she and her best friend from college, who was visiting from the East Coast, excitedly went to the pool to meet Noth. The visiting friend confirms going to the pool and sitting with Zoe and Noth in the jacuzzi.
Zoe says Noth asked her “all sorts of questions about my major and what I studied.” He had a book with him and told her to take a look at it because he was thinking of doing a project based on the material. Then, according to Zoe and her friend, he said he had to go to his apartment to take a call. But he left the book, asking Zoe to look through it and bring it back to his apartment. Zoe was flattered: “He said, ‘I’d love to know what you think.’ I thought, ‘I’m new. He’s asking my opinion — I’ve only been in Hollywood for two months.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter