Kim Cattrall sees your praise about *that* viral quote you love so much: ‘I stand by that’

Kim Cattrall is here to have "fun."

This year alone, she's starred alongside Robert De Niro in the family comedy "About My Father" and is set to appear in a cameo for "And Just Like That...," which premiered June 22 — the same day as her latest starring role in the glitzy miniseries "Glamorous."

Recently, she took to Twitter to share a blurry screen grab of her character in the Netflix show, Madolyn, striking a fabulous pose.

"The ‘FUN’ is back!" she wrote.

One might not be shocked to hear that Cattrall is seeking out "fun," considering her now infamous 2019 interview with the Guardian in which she proclaimed, "I don’t even want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself."

"I stand by that," she tells TODAY.com, nearly four years later.

A screenshot of the her headshot alongside the article’s headline resurfaces on Twitter every few months, toeing the line between major pop culture moment and meme.

Just a few days before our interview on June 20, the quote had popped up on Twitter again, receiving a modest 600 likes.

“I think about this quote from THE queen @KimCattrall all the time,” wrote the Twitter user who shared it.

The quote, which has also graced greeting cards, T-shirts and mugs sold online, is often circulated as a joke and shared as an expression of hedonism, the kind often reserved for a celebrity.

Its context reveals a different sentiment. The interview touched on her heartbreak over the death of her brother, who died by suicide in 2018.

“I want to choose who I spend time with personally and professionally,” Cattrall said in the full quoted paragraph. “It’s my life. I lost my dad seven years ago, to Alzheimer’s, and Mum has just turned 90. I’ve become aware there’s only so much time left.”

Now, when asked about the quote and its lasting imprint on the internet, she laughs.

"When I said it, it just made more sense than ever," she tells TODAY.com.

She's seen criticism about how that sentiment only applies to people in her position — but she stands by it.

"We all have that choice — on some level we do," she says.

"I stand by that, especially when things get complicated," she adds. "It's like checking in with yourself and saying, 'How am I feeling right now? Is this right for me? Is this right for now?' ... It gives you some kind of a step back and a perspective on your life."

She didn't set out to make internet history with the quote.

"I said it because it's something that I live by," she says.

It's a motto that comes directly from her own experience and was "hard-won," she says.

"I have been in situations where I thought, 'This isn't the best place for me,'" she says. "And you have to listen to that instinct, it's there for a reason. It's there to protect you."

Feeling ‘protective’ of 'Glamorous'

Cattrall says she brought some of that life experience to her "Glamorous" character, Madolyn Addison, a former supermodel turned make-up mogul navigating the corporate world while searching for her missing passion.

Her first words on the show sum up the character better than any personality description. As she's scoping out the product placement of her own makeup line at the mall, one of the beauty counter attendants, Marco, spots her through the big hat and sunglasses. As she turns around in slow motion, the music builds, revealing Cattrall's Madolyn.

"It's you," Marco, played by Miss Benny, says in shock. "What do I do, do I bow?"

"Please don't," she says, with a grimace.

Many have been quick to draw a throughline from her iconic "Sex and the City" character Samantha Jones to Madolyn. But Cattrall describes her less as a self-confident single career woman and more like someone trying to claw their way back to the top.

"I wanted her at the beginning to be a little more reserved," Cattrall tells TODAY.com. "She very much is in her head. She's achieved so much. She's broken so many ceilings. And now she needs inspiration."

"She’s always scheming, always working,” Cattrall adds. “She’s had to be a survivor her whole life.”

Other than the fact that Cattrall and Madolyn "look a lot alike," she quips, the actor says her own life has informed the character.

"I'm a woman in my 60s, I've lived in New York most of my life," she says. "So if I'm playing a character who's been in those given circumstances, I want to bring my knowledge to that. I want to make her as smart as she can be, and as daring as she can be, and as individual. And I can make her."

As a result, she is "protective" of the character, a feeling she also still harbors for Samantha.

“I don’t think I’ll ever say goodbye to Samantha,” Cattrall told TODAY's Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager in an interview. “She’s like a lot of other characters that I’ve done over the years. I get very emotionally attached and protective of my characters. She gave me so much and I’m so appreciative of her.”

Advice on love and career

Both of the principal stars of "Glamorous" find themselves in the classic trappings of a love triangle. Madolyn, between her driver and a mystery man she encounters in an elevator. Marco, meanwhile is torn between the company's resident nerd, Ben, and the uber-fit Parker, who he accidentally shares an Uber with.

Cattrall says Madolyn would tell Marco to slow down.

"Take your time," she says. "Listen to what people say, but look what they do — what are their actions?"

Just like how meeting at the mall flipped Marco and Madolyn's worlds upside down, Cattrall credits some of her favorite words of wisdom to a chance encounter in her life — working with actor Jack Lemmon.

Lemmon, who died in 2001, and Cattrall crossed paths starring in the 1980 drama film, "Tribute."

"He said, 'Do things that scare you. Do things that you don't know if you can do it, and that's how you grow,'" she says. "For me, I want to continue to grow as an actress. I want to keep taking challenges on."

That advice "spurred" her on into her career, she says. But when it comes to sharing her own words of wisdom, she considers how it'd be received.

"I'm always very respectful," she says. "If I feel that there's a situation where I can be helpful or supportive, and if not, I let somebody else figure it out."

She's worked with young casts on several recent projects, including "How I Met Your Father" and 2022's "Queer as Folk."

"I love working with young people because they don't know where the stop signs are, and they create their own," she says. "It's a different world than when I was coming up, thank God, in so many ways."

When it comes to working with members of a different generation, she says she's learned from the approach taken by Robert De Niro.

"He's an actor first. He's coming to the set, and he's looking to play. He wants to be open, he wants to available for what you come up with, which he'll bounce off of. And that's what makes the job really fun," she says.

Kim Cattrall's TBR

Cattrall's current reads are "all over the map right now," she says.

After reading Maggie O'Farrell's "Hamnet" two years ago — "which I just absolutely love," she notes — she started the author's "This Must Be the Place," a 2017 novel about a close-knit family living the Ireland countryside protecting secrets about their past.

She says she's also "dipping into a little bit of 'The Devil Wears Prada," because she saw the movie, but never read the book.

"I also read the recent biography of Anna Wintour, which I found really interesting," she says.

Now, wait. Reading about Wintour while starring as a striving CEO of a makeup company? While "Glamorous" has been compared to media like "Ugly Betty," "The Bold Type" and, yes, "The Devil Wears Prada" — Cattrall says the legendary Vogue figurehead didn't inspire Madolyn.

"I wanted to make Madolyn my own," she says. "I like to take and pick from different things mostly from what I experience as opposed to what I see in movies."

"I also thought that Madolyn had a fantastic sense of humor," she adds. "She didn't come from a cruel place or a dominating place, she came from a place of no compromise, especially where her makeup line was concerned. I can get behind that."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com