HOLLYWOOD INSIDER

So whatever happened to ‘Sex & the City’s’ Kim Cattrall and former bombshell Bo Derek?

Los Angeles — Two iconic women from the past — Bo Derek and Kim Cattrall — are making a comeback in our lives. Derek, now 63, has an autobiographical documentary while Cattrall, now 64, with a new satirical drama TV series.

Derek, who was the fantasy of most men (and women) during the ‘80s with her cornrow-braided hair while running on the beach in a swimsuit in “10,” met with us recently while she was in her home office in Santa Ynez in the Central Coast, north of Santa Barbara, quarantining with her beau of 18 years, “Sex and the City” actor John Corbett, 59, and three big dogs who did not mind listening in on the virtual interview.

Derek talked to us about her documentary “Bo Derek: In My Own Words,” her, her relationship with Corbett, and what she learned from the pandemic.

Cattrall, on the other hand, who portrayed the sexy power publicist Samantha Jones in “Sex and the City,” has gone back to TV via her new TV series, “Filthy Rich” where she portrays the controlling TV host and co-founder of the Sunshine Network, Margaret Monreaux.

Cattrall talked to us about being a producer on her new show, her current love relationship and the life lessons she learned while doing “Sex and the City.”

Below are excerpts of our conversations with the two ladies:

Bo Derek

You became an icon with the movie “10.” When that happened, do you feel that really changed your life completely?

Yeah, it absolutely changed my life completely.  I always look back at that time as being overwhelming for a young woman and someone who wasn’t prepared for it but at the same time it was like being given a magic credit card in life.  Obviously it depends what you choose to do with it, but for me, I feel like taking advantage of it, it opens doors to anything you’re interested in, if you want to make a difference, if you just want to be selfish, whatever you want, it’s an incredible gift.

Is there still pressure for you to be a “10”? To stay in shape and be attractive?

I don’t want to look “10” always. I don’t think I ever have. I think it's the magic of photography. But, I’m lucky because I liked the outdoors, I’m born with a body type from my parents. I have nothing to do with it that is popular right now.  And I have, from all the crazy sports I have done in my life, now in my life I swim because it’s good for my back, my neck, everything. It’s the anti-horseback riding thing to do and it burns the most calories per minute, which is good for me because I like to eat.  But I have a very easy relationship with that pressure.  When I go to work, I’ll spend a couple of months and watch it for a little bit. But I love to eat. I hate to exercise. I am like most people.

Where do you swim: in the ocean or in the pool?

Both. I swim regularly in a swimming pool at my YMCA here, a gymnasium.  But I have a girlfriend and once a year we do a long distance ocean swim.  Yeah, we train together and we decided that once a year we will take a swim in a pretty place.  So we’ve been to Turkey, to Greece, and it’s fun when you stand on one piece of land and look at an island or a peninsula and think I am going to swim all of six kilometers or whatever it is.

Congratulations on your documentary. I found it to be totally honest. Did you at any point in your life actually regret that you were too honest maybe?

I don’t ever regret being honest; I regret sometimes that when it gets reported, my conversation, it’s difficult unless you listen to the whole thing sometimes to get my meaning. So I’m not very good at speaking in sound bites and being very cautious so I don’t get myself into trouble often. (Laughs) But in this case, the documentary was all the producer’s work. He’s very clever, he said I need four hours, which I thought was absurd. There’s no way I could talk for four hours about myself and my life. And he has a very effective technique of just being very quiet and letting me talk, and pretty soon you’ve gone places that you don’t think is entertaining, interesting, but you leave it up to him. I was very surprised what he chose to use out of that interview. It’s not what I would have chosen but it’s his film.

You look fantastic and natural. Were you ever tempted to have any work done?

Of course, because every time you do — especially a red carpet where things are out of your control and…as being in front of the camera since I was a young girl, you teach a lot so you know how to protect yourself. But on a red carpet everything’s up for grabs.

I don’t work all the time so when long periods go by and I see a photo of myself it’s so shocking and then you have to just get on with it because you realize look, I am 63, it’s ok to look like this, you’re supposed to look like this. My instinct is that I was blessed with a certain bone structure and it’s part of what made my life so magical. It opened doors for sure, I’m not going to deny that my father’s nose had nothing to do with my success but I had a good run with it so it seems greedy to try to hang onto it. And I don’t think it’s that effective anyway.

What compelled you to do this documentary and why do you think now is the time to be doing this?

I actually didn’t want to do it for a long time and the producer Bill Katz was, I spoke to him a few times on the phone, long conversations…and I just took a chance, it was a leap of faith. He was very interesting, promised that I would have input before it was finished. It was funny because when I saw the first draft or the first edit I was uncomfortable in a lot of places and I made notes and I was going to ask for changes, not that I would demand them but that I would ask for them. It was John Corbett, my boyfriend and he’s the one who said no, let it go, this is honest, this is real, it’s important, leave it as is and so I did. I felt normal when I did it but people are saying it’s extremely honest. I was blown away by Linda Evans and Sean Derek and John Voight and the people who bothered to take the time to be part of this. It really affected me.

Talk about your life now with John Corbett and how are you getting through this pandemic and what have you learned while in isolation.

I had extreme good fortune in my life and then I think I’ve also made choices that are selfish, that make me happy. So living up here in central California, being surrounded by animals was a dream since I was a little girl and I’m lucky that I get to live it. I don’t think I’ve ever been home for so long though without traveling and being on some kind of job or mission, or just fun. Since January actually, because I was home before the pandemic for a time, I’ve been home and I love it. I love doing all the chores myself. You wake up, you have your coffee, you walk the dogs, you feed the horses, you feed the dogs, you feed yourself and the whole day goes on. And then we have dinner and we watch movies all night and it’s been great.

I’ve been with John for 18 years now. I can’t believe it myself. And it’s a relationship built on day to day more than ok. We are a committed couple. We are at this age you’re not starting a new family so everything’s a little different, very different.

John enters room and says hello to us.

It’s day to day and we’re still together 18 years later. It’s starting to feel real and settled I guess (laughs) after all this time. But he’s great fun. He’s full of life. He’s full of joy and he makes me laugh every day.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

I am optimistic. I don’t know about the planet.  I don’t know if we’ve lost control. I don’t know.  But I’m optimistic. I see young people and I see that they are kinder, more loving, more caring about their environment and about other people.  I am optimistic about my country and how we accept people and racism.  I feel good.  At the same time, I’m very involved in wildlife trafficking issues, and with “Wild Aid,” who I have been working with for 18 years.  There are some things happening now that I don’t know if we will ever recover from or that animals can survive with this incredible demand on them.  The virus, I think in the few years from now we are going to look back and really see the damage that it caused.  I never thought I would see the whole world shutdown the way it has. I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the full effects of it at this point.

What have you learned about love in your life?

I think sometimes it's the way we're wired. I think some people are meant to give a lot of love, some people take a lot, some people expect so much of the other person that no-one can live up to it.  I think some people – I am not – I see it's the most important thing but I am not obsessive about it and I don't need someone to be what I want them to be.  I have a sense that we're together and loving each other while it lasts but all you have to do is look around and know that it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be forever so but at the same time I think it's a miracle that anyone loves me so I feel a sense of respect for it that I would never want to betray it.

Would you say love has changed your life?

Completely. Especially the first one with my husband (the late director John Derek) because I was so young and I was coming from a very suburban life and all of a sudden exposed to the world and artists and traveling and characters.  Now my life is more my own sharing it with John Corbett so it's more settled and relaxed, more fun in many ways because I'm doing what I want to do.  We happen to be enjoying doing the same things together.

How is John Corbett in real life?

John is wild which he wasn't in that character.  He's very childish in some ways in the sense of fun and full of joy and at the same time he can be a devil and be trouble too.  He's different from his character.

The corn rows made you a fashion icon. Nowadays, the corn rows have a different meaning, a political meaning. What are your thoughts on that?

It surprised me. It took me by surprise. When I did it, it was just to help create this character, that she's some kind of goddess and unreal. And then in the story, you turn out, she's very real, very common girl. So I was copying something that was beautiful. And women at the time, African American women, constantly came up to me and thanked me for wearing the hairstyle because they couldn't go to their, job to their workplace. The boss would say, "No, you can't wear that hairstyle." which is incredible to think only 30 years, 40 years later, that you couldn't wear braids to work. But that's what it was. And it made me very approachable to African American women.

But now we're going through a shift for sure, and African American women don't like it. They feel it's stealing their culture, and that's not what my intent was. I understand their objection to it now. I would never wear it again now, but I hope they understand that it was a different time. They say imitation is the best form of flattery. That's all it was meant. And now the idea that some African American women find it hurtful what I did, I'm very sorry, but it was a different time.

I like it. Yeah. I can eat a lot of pasta, so that's good.

Kim Cattrall

Where are you right now?

I am in Canada. My mom is at a senior’s facility close to where I am. I bought a house here about six years ago, so that is where we are right now.

How important was it for you to be a producer on this project?

It was actually a dream, because I only have two other experiences of being a producer, but I wanted to learn from someone like Tate Taylor, who has done so many great movies. And I want to continue to act in films, but I would also like to produce films that maybe I am not fortunate enough to be in, but I want to have a voice. I want to make films for women my age. We have so many stories to tell and there’s just not enough women producers out there.  So it was very, very important, I wanted to have a voice, I wanted to learn what it was like and have more experience. So it was really a part of the package.

How was your experience at the beginning of your career like when you were doing “Sex and the City” and everyone wanted a piece of you in your career?

I think that my career has really been based on choices, playing characters that are different and I don’t know them that well. I think that that’s a huge chance to take because it can go very wrong, because they are so bold, they are such extroverts, and also a woman of my generation, we are not taught to do that, you were still under the feeling that if we are too much, we will be rejected or we will be blamed or we will be ostracized or we will be banned. 

I think the landscape now is a lot different. Thank goodness, than it was. But I have always seen my work as something that I can use to work out and understand more of the questions that I am having as a person, Kim. So I have always delineated very clearly from my professional life and my personal life. So if someone doesn’t hire me for something, then I figure okay, that’s not the role for me, instead of “those bastards, how come they wouldn’t let me in the door?” I let that go and I concentrate on what I could do in the past.

Now with so many women, so many women having the opportunity to say yes, you can have me do this acting, but I also want to do producing, this is something else that I want to do because I want to continue to work as long as I can and to tell these stories of these women who you have never seen before or you start to question why haven’t I seen them before?  And they are there, they live within our society everywhere, but they don’t have a voice.  I think when you don’t have a voice as an actor, then you are lost, you really do feel like a victim to these people who say no, these gatekeepers who say no.  But if you are creative and resourceful and in my case very stubborn, you can get an opportunity, which I feel like I have here now.

What do you think “Sex and the City” meant to people?

It's a zeitgeist, you know, it sort of crack to the vase and the light went through as far as women's friendships, women's sexuality, the way women really relate to one another so it was, you know, I think it's very freeing especially at the time it came out and it wasn't just subject matter about sexuality, it was about their lives, about their relationships, about themselves in the workplace.  They were really battling so many aspects of now when I see them on shows those characters already take them for granted so it's kind of a zeitgeist into peoples' way things were and thank God they changed but again we have to be really vigilant as women to not backslide on any of the progress that we continue to make.

What does “filthy rich” mean to you? Wikipedia says you are worth $60 or $75 million.

I wish I had that much money (laughs) but I don't. I don't know whoever wrote that is not my accountant. Seriously, being on a cable show has its rewards but it's certainly not financially but I have enough money. I'm more than set thank goodness. I'm very conservative and I get my money working for me but I think there's a point where especially now where I'm glad that I have that comfort to take chances and to say yes and no to roles that I feel are right for me or I feel that I would like to take on not every role. 

Financially I don't have the wolf at the door but for me I think security is not monetary. It's, you know, if you have I think the greatest wisdom really is to know when enough is enough in the sense of I have enough, I can feed myself, I can feed my family, I can help my friends, I can contribute to my community which I've been taught to do, I've been brought up to do but it doesn't make me feel secure. 

It doesn't make me happy, it, in one way or another, gives me the advantage to say yes or no and that to me is something that I've worked hard for but and I don't take it for granted but I don't consider myself somebody who is filthy or even rich. I think I'm comfortable. I mean, when I go to Hollywood I see real rich people there. I see people who have either inherited their wealth or made their wealth but they live in a way that I don't think I could really relate to.

I wouldn't want to just be working for mortgages and payments, I want to work because I want to, I need to in the sense of being creative but I am not naive enough to say that I would be able to make this without the career that I've had but, at the same time, I've worked really hard for it so I don't have a consciousness about it. I just know that I have enough and enough to live my life and to be part of my community and contribute.

What did you learn from the pandemic? Did you find love during the time of corona?

Well, it's actually – it's been a very unusual – none of us have experienced anything quite like this. There's been time enough to think, there's been time enough to sit still and observe where you are and what you're doing. We unfortunately lost a dear friend at the very beginning of the pandemic in New York and that really shook us up.

He's the same age as – he was the same age that I am and we were very close and he was a lovely, lovely, lovely man and he went up to Canada because New York was not getting any better and my mom is in a seniors' facility there and we kind of rallied round and it was the feeling of I had before I left home of being part of a family, being making mealtime, you know, even if it was on WhatsApp or on Zoom or keeping in touch, having the time to write notes, having the time to unpack things that I put in my attic 4 or 5 years ago to make my load lighter in what I need and what I no longer need any more so it's been very tragic in a lot of ways for so many people but it's also been a time of reflection and a lot of housekeeping and that house is your life, you know, rejuvenating.  I don't need this anymore, you know, so that's the best of it and the worst of it is the loss.

And yes I found love. And he's British. And we met in, in London at the BBC. I was recording something for a program called Woman's Hour on Radio 4. And we were dating courting for about eight months and I've just become an American citizen. So I can vote. It's very important to vote in this election. And we were doing really, really well. We've been really blessed with so far how this has gone, but ever vigilant.

It happened so easily, which is the extraordinary thing about it. I mean, a lot of relationships in the past have been fraught by distance and long locations or separations, and I was really ready and I think Russell, that's his name, Russell Thomas. He I think was ready to, and so it's been very easy and it feels natural that we're together. And when we're not together, I miss him very, very much. So this has been a good time to get to know each other even more because he doesn't have to fly off and neither do I. There's no boarding pass in our hand or in our lives. So, and the more time we spent, the more sure I am that this is the guy for me.

Russ and I met in a really difficult time for me. I had a real terrible bout with insomnia and I've never had trouble sleeping ever, even though my menopause I didn't.

Russell, my boyfriend now. I wrote about this experience about the insomnia and the essay that I wrote was accepted to be performed by myself to be read by myself on this program in the UK called Woman's Hour. I wrote it and I sent it to a producer of that show and she said, we want to produce it. So I came to London to record it. And she said to me at BBC radio. She said, this is Russell and he's going to be taking care of you for the next three days. So that's where we met. So he looked after me for those three days. And then I was going up to the Edinburgh Film Festival, which is really fun.

And I said you should come. And he took the train up and then he said, well, where are you going now? And I said, well, actually, I'm going to go see my family on Vancouver Island. And he said, I've never been to Vancouver Island. And I said, well, you should come. And so he came. He went to Vancouver Island, and we didn't know each other very well. And, and then we went to Australia for a tour on a job that I had there, a small job. And he flew from London to Singapore and I flew from New York to LA to Australia. And we just slowly but surely became very, very close.

And of course the pandemic we haven't been separated. There was one point we were in New York and we wanted to get back to Canada to see my mom. She's in a senior's facility. And we were nervous about how she was going to be okay with that, if we should take her out. So Russ said I don't know if they'll let me into Canada. Canada fortunately recognizes common law partnerships so he could get in. But if not, we were going to have to come up with another plan or be separated. So fortunately we weren't. I can't imagine going through this without him. It would be really, really difficult. But that's how we met. — LA, GMA News