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For six seasons, Kim Cattrall played the provocative Samantha Jones on "Sex and the City, " She apparently learned a few things from the uninhibited character and she's passing it on in a new book and an HBO documentary called "Sexual Intelligence".
Kim Cattrall, good morning! How are you?
Good morning! I'm great!
You said this is, it has been a three-year project actually, right?
Yes, I mean this has been the longest gestation period in history.
You think you're birthing a baby, yeah?
Yes, and this is my, this is my three-year-old baby here.
What is sexual intel... intelligence exactly? What do you mean by that?
Well what we wanted to do, I think everyone knows what intelligence is. But sexuality can be kind of scary and mysterious. So we wanted to shed some light on the different aspects of sexuality. We wanted to start with desire from the outside, then we wanted to go to messaging. And then we wanted to try arousal,(Right.) then fantasy and the ultimate ending: release.
And desire you spent a lot of time on, why, why desire that you want to spend so much time on?
Well, it's very complex , desire. And we wanted to take it from a female and a male point of view. And then we wanted to go to the physicality of desire: what a man goes through ; what a woman goes through. And then we wanted to go more into the psychology of it, and the biology. And then into the fantastical. And then into hopefully the joining-together of the physical and the emotional and the spiritual.
We have been talking about the fact that this is a companion to a HBO documentary. And you spent time in various cultures and various countries looking at how they look at sex. I wanna take a look at this clip of you from Pompeii.
Oh, great.
All right ?
You're in Pompeii. Thousands of citizens were entombed in hot ash and lava, along with all the trappings of the sophisticated cosmopolitan lifestyle. People lived in open-air villas surrounding gardens of delight where sensual pleasures were pursued with relish.
So, then I ask this question how do we, in this country ,compare in terms of our attitudes about sex and sexuality to some of the places that you've been (to) and visited in this.
Well it was interesting to go back in time and see where nature and culture really were colliding especially with sexuality. Uhm, going to Pompeii in particular was fascinating because there I mean it was so openly celebrated and worshipped. (Yeah.) I mean from ,ur, mobiles that were hanging with phalluses and little bells, you know, you could ping.
Which are on the book..
Which are in the books. To doorstops, to just there was. . . you know. . . a house of repute just down the street. They were on the sidewalls. They were absolutely everywhere. (Yeah.) And then you look about today what the phalluses are , they are hidden away. There're no. . . they're out of plain sight as they say. (yeah) So there is a tremendous, I think, amount of, excuse me, fear that's happened in, especially in the last I would say 200 and 250 years.
What about this field in England that women go to, they actually think that, that the field gets some pregnant? Is that?
Well, this was a fertility site. This is one of the oldest sites that we went to and it was in Dorset, England. It's the Cerne Abbas Giant. And this is a huge man on the top of a hillside, and he has a 26-foot phallus. Men or women go there. And ur you can get pregnant, it is a fertility site.
Wow!
In fact I'll make a party, if it's Curopinshenko, she will kill me for doing this. She was trying to get pregnant at that time. So she did the ritual and (lo and behold). She has a baby.
There you go. That's irrefutable proof I guess. Um, let me ask you this, because undoubtedly there would be those out there who'll say, but she's not a sex therapist. And she is not, she played this woman who was uninhibited and sexually even aggressive on television. So what do you say if those people say she might not be qualified to be doing a book like this.
I'm not a sex therapist. I've never purported to be. I would never really want to have that responsibility. But what I do have is a platform to talk about sexuality. So I can bring the experts. That was the wonderful thing about the book and the documentary. If we brought every man to the table, we brought seven people: four heterosexuals, one gay man, one gay woman, one heterose(xual), one bisexual woman. As you really speak about what sexuality is to them. Because I think everyone has questions about sexuality. But it's, it's scary to voice them. And bringing these experts and going back in time and history, and putting them all together to say "what about this? Did you ever think about this? "
One of my favorite points was this chemical called oxytocin, which is released when you get attracted to someone. (Yeah) And this chemical you know you build up sort of tolerance to it after like a five-year period.
Like a five-year marriage?
Exactly! And this hold the old adage of, you know, the seven-year itch. Well we discover it's the five year itch which takes seven years to scratch because that's when you build up immunity to this. You literally are drugged by your lover. And all these things that people don't know. I think they are wonderful ideas to think about, sexually and otherwise.
Ah, so interesting. Ok, so when can we see it?
It's going to air on HBO November 15th.
All right. Very good. Kim Cattrall, so good to see you! We missed you all as Samantha, but good to see you in person.
I'm back, I'm back in Sexual Intelligence.
Yeah, sure, thanks a lot.
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