A week after Sex and the City’s Chris Noth reprised his role as Big on the long-awaited spin-off And Just Like That…, the actor has been accused of sexual assaults that allegedly took place in 2004 and 2015.
“I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now,” Noth said in a statement of the allegations, which were reported Thursday by The Hollywood Reporter. “But I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
One woman, speaking under the pseudonym Zoe, claims she first met Noth in 2004 when she was 22 and working an entry-level position at a “high-profile firm where Noth and other celebrities regularly had business.” She claims that Noth, then 49, got her phone number and started leaving voicemails on her work phone. Zoe says that she eventually accepted an invitation to a West Hollywood building where Noth kept an apartment. While there, Zoe claims the actor raped her. Afterward, Zoe says, she went to Cedars-Sinai hospital to get stitches.
A friend of Zoe’s, who is now a child psychologist, confirmed Zoe’s account to The Hollywood Reporter. Zoe’s boss at the time separately confirmed that Zoe told her of the alleged attack shortly after it happened, but that at Zoe’s request, she did not share details of the assault with anyone else. The UCLA Rape Treatment Center confirmed that it treated Zoe without addressing specific details of her situation.
The other woman, speaking under the pseudonym Lily, told The Hollywood Reporter she met Noth while working as a 25-year-old nightclub server in 2015. “I was truly starstruck,” said Lily, a fan of the series. “He was hitting on me, for sure. I was flattered. I knew he was married, which is shameful of me to admit.”
Lily says that Noth, then 60, invited her out to dinner at Il Cantinori—a restaurant seen on a Sex and the City episode—but when she arrived, the kitchen was already closed. After drinking wine, she says Noth invited her to his apartment around the corner where he made sexual advances at her and eventually allegedly assaulted her.
A friend of Lily’s confirmed that she heard the same account in 2015, listened to a voicemail Noth sent afterward, and suggested that Lily call the police.
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Noth denied the allegations.
“The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false,” said Noth. “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.”
The women, who do not know each other, reached out to The Hollywood Reporter in the months leading up to the premiere of And Just Like That…, claiming that HBO Max’s promotion of the series triggered their painful memories.
HBO has not responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
The accusations come one week after And Just Like That… shocked fans by killing off Noth’s character in a Peloton-related death that caused the company’s stock to plummet 11% the day after the premiere. To quell further P.R. fallout, Noth’s character was then resurrected by Peloton in an ad turned around in less than 48 hours this past weekend.
On Friday though, following the allegations, Peloton removed its viral ad featuring Noth from its Twitter and Instagram handles, as well as its YouTube channel.