‘Sex and the City’ alum Jason Lewis has recalled his rocky road to fame and how he had little money for food and had to sleep on floors in Paris before booking the hit ’90s TV series.
The actor, who played Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall)’s lover Smith Jerrod, detailed his struggles when he moved to Europe at the age of 21 to become a model.
“I was starving for a while,” he said on a recent episode of co-star Kristin Davis’ podcast “Are You a Charlotte?”
Lewis, 55, was scouting bakeries and stealing baguettes.
“Then I’d go to an outdoor cafe and take out a pot of mustard and pour it on (baguettes) and then have a big meal of mustard bread sandwiches,” he continued.
“That’s why I slept on the floor,” the “Mr. Brooks” star told Davis, 61, explaining that his life changed after he booked the gig.
“I think it was about a year and a half before we started having our first decent money coming in,” Lewis said. “So I could have bought this one cucumber and this cheese, but I was starving for about six months.”
“Staying lean was easy, though,” he joked.
Lewis made his debut on SATC in 2003, at the age of 32, as Samantha’s young model boyfriend, Smith, in the series’ sixth and final season.
Working as a publicist, Samantha helped jumpstart Smith’s career as their relationship took an unexpectedly serious turn.
The two characters remained close during Samantha’s battle with cancer, and ultimately remained a couple when the series ended in 2004.
Lewis reprized the role in the 2008 film Sex and the City and its 2010 sequel, but his and Cattrall’s characters broke up and remained friends.
None of the cast other than Cattrall were asked to rejoin the HBO reboot “And Just Like That,” which was canceled after three seasons last summer.
Cattrall, 69, did not sign on to appear on the series, other than a brief cameo in season two, amid a long-running feud with Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie Bradshaw.
Additionally, the actress told Piers Morgan in a 2017 interview that she had “never been friends” with any of her other castmates, alluding to Davis (Charlotte York) and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbs).
Meanwhile, Lewis remained silent on the radio station after appearing on Dancing with the Stars during season 31 in 2022.
However, he resurfaced in May, announcing that he had moved to Costa Rica and was writing a nine-book fantasy series, though the details have not yet been revealed.
“It’s been 3 years and the time has come,” he captioned the post.
