Kim CattrallSex and the City star Kim Cattrall has revealed she was worried about the decision to give her character Samantha breast cancer during in the sixth season of the series.

She explained recently: “I was nervous at first because it felt like some kind of punishment: any woman who can do what she wants and say what she wants and sleep with who she wants in society is punished.

“From medieval times she was stoned or they cut her throat, ex-communicated or banished and branded her as a whore. There’s always been that throughout history, a woman must pay for that freedom.

“I felt that giving this character cancer could have taken on this connotation and I was kind of upset - but the [writers] told me they were going to handle it in a unique way and script after script it just got better. And I was very grateful for that.”