Toronto Star
September 28, 2002

Bright Lights, Big's City

By Rita Zekas

"HEY, I know you," Chris Noth said in the Citytv interview room. "Didn't you interview me for The Judge?"

"No," Star Gazing replied, "we actually had drinks together at Joso's."

"That's right," he recalled, "you're the friend of Lolita's," as in Lolita Davidovich, his co-star in The Judge.

Full disclosure. Star Gazing and an accomplice stalked Noth, who plays Mr. Big on Sex And The City. Mr. Big is tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, powerful and careless with women. We planted ourselves at a table beside his at Joso's and unabashedly gawked. We are Sex addicts and Big fans.

He was charming and completely unself-absorbed. It was a bitterly cold evening and when he pulled off his toque, he had serious hat head. But he didn't primp. He sat there with hair bent out of shape all evening.

Noth even consented to having a photo taken with us, ” but only after we promised it would not be published. We said nothing about having it framed and displayed prominently at our primary work stations.

And the photo op escalated into a fan frenzy. Noth was swarmed by the adjacent table full of women engaged in a bridal stagette.

Next night, same situation, different venue. We just happened (no stalking involved) to be at a birthday party at Bistro 990 when Noth walked in for a late dinner with Judge castmates and an orgy of adulation broke loose. One trophy wife, buoyed up by way too much champagne, unbuttoned her blouse and flashed Noth's table.

Noth thanked the women for their enthusiasm, signed autographs, ” but not body
parts,” and begged off to continue his dinner.

And those were but two nights in his life. Noth, which rhymes with "both," not "moth," is bemused by all the rabid attention his Sex character inspires. Hell, Star Gazing could have scalped tickets to the interview. Noth is drop-dead gorgeous, even with a new moustache he's trying out.

"They call me `Mr. Big' on the street," he allowed. "Luckily John Corbett (who plays Carrie's/Sarah Jessica Parker's rejected fiancé Aidan) came on the show, and he took up a lot of the slack."

Yeah, but when Big behaves cad-ly, then flashes that bad-boy grin, Carrie's resolve teeters like her stilettos.

"I'll do it at the bar," he grinned disingenuously, "and see if it works." (He's co-owner of the Cutting Room, a New York club featuring acoustic rock music.)

As if he's never tried it on before.

"There is something strange and odd (about all the attention); I'm surprised about the intense reaction. I read the New York Times and people are so concerned about Big and Carrie, ” where's the protest movement about the (proposed) war in Iraq? We're over-saturated with entertainment.

"I just like to know people are laughing and can laugh, especially about sex, which is a very serious issue. To me the show's greatest asset is its sense of charmed ridiculousness of human beings, of men and women as they try to work things out. What's tragic on screen to the characters is hilariously funny to watch."

Big and Carrie are still on their approach/avoidance romantic collision course. In the fifth season, which is telecast midnight on Friday on Bravo! and repeated Saturday at 11 p.m., Noth appears in only one episode, the second last. Why only one, and what took him so long?

"This season was shortened because of Sarah Jessica's pregnancy, and they
didn't want to put me on the show just to put me on the show, ” it has to be organic. I don't want to be in every episode; there has to be a good reason. In the episode, Carrie visits me in San Francisco, and it's one of my favourites."

Ours is the one where Carrie and Big dance to "Moon River," right before he runs away to Napa.

"He was not running away," Noth said defensively. "It's life, life brought him there. All of us have a wanting to go far, far away. Mine's many places. It used to be Indonesia, but now there is too much tourism."

Noth wouldn't be surprised if season six is the series' last, ” "it feels like it could be," and don't expect to learn his name. "We'll never find out Big's name," he insisted. "I don't care what Sting's name is."

Probably just as well. What a letdown when we found out Kramer's first name was Cosmo.

"Big's not some suave guy who poses and has cute one-liners, and he's not a totally obnoxious, unlikeable guy like a lot of rich people. I think Carrie named him Mr. Big because he's the big love of her life."

Noth got involved with the series because he was seduced by the script.

"My agent gave me the script, and I was intrigued by the character," he recalled. "When Carrie asks me if I've ever been in love and I say "Absaf------lutely, what a great reply. I wanted to see where it goes; it was so funny and daring. After five years on Law And Order (on which he played Mike Logan, from 1990 to 1995), this was for me a great character leap and a challenging actor choice."

In fact, women know Noth from Sex; men from Law And Order.

Noth was in town early this week to appear in Harry Rosen's Luxury By Design
fundraiser for prostate cancer, in which 14 celebs selected a chair, which was then produced in men's suiting fabric. His was done by Ermenegildo Zegna in a sport coat fabric in blue plaid wool. It was not Noth's sartorial choice; he would have preferred something darker. Could you see Big in blue plaid?

Noth lives in Manhattan, was born on Nov 13, 1954, in Madison, Wisc., and raised in Connecticut, youngest of three boys. His mother, Jeanne, is a former CBS TV news reporter.

He described his recent stint on Broadway in the Gore Vidal play The Best Man, as "like coming home again." Indeed, Noth is a graduate of Yale Drama School, where he studied with Sanford Meisner and appeared in over 25 productions including the title role of a production of Hamlet directed by Zoe Caldwell. He made his film debut in 1982 in Smithereens playing a transvestite prostitute.

He dodged questions about Carrie and Big getting back together.

"Those you love the most are the ones who can't get it together. These are two people who drive each other crazy but have to be around each other. And even when they aren't together, they're still feeling the vibe."

As to their biggest impediment: "Big's inability to open up 100 per cent to the demands she requires for intimacy. He needs a room to go to that doesn't include her. At his age, he's got the freedom to walk away. He's an older, established man who has been through it, married and divorced and doesn't require his emotional survival to be contingent on the kind of commitment she does. That said, they are great together; their minds mesh. They are an old-fashioned couple in the old way, the old school,” the old New York that is disappearing fast."

If things go on the way they have in the past two seasons, they're going to have to rename it No Sex In The City. Even Samantha is complaining about lack of action, and there has been critical grumbling that the series is becoming too serious.

"It doesn't have to be light all the time," Noth contended.

"People eventually have to let go and move on. The show moves on. Law And Order I find no longer interesting because it doesn't go to different places."

In addition to Sex, Noth will appear as General Pompey in the miniseries Caesar ("I enjoyed wearing a toga") and in the indie film Searching For Paradise, in which he plays an actor pursued by an obsessed fan.

Something to which he can relate.

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