Nino Muñoz/The CWBring on the pasties and nude undies!
A young miss Samantha Jones (Lindsey Gort) makes her debut on the CW's The Carrie Diaries tonight, and according to the show's executive producer [and generally awesome human being, not that we are biased] Amy B. Harris, she's definitely bringing some heat to the show—along with new guest star Molly Sims, who's playing a cougar hottie preying on Carrie's [Anna Sophia Robb] main squeeze. "Anyone over the age of 27 is an old-lady cougar on our show!" Harris cracks.
Here are five juicy tidbits you must know about the new season of The Carrie Diaries, starting tonight on the CW:
Samantha Will Get Naked—"Emotionally" and Otherwise: Yo, Parents Television Council, you can simmer down. ‘Cause that mention of pasties and nude underwear up top? Well that's what Carrie Diaries' new Samantha, Lindsey Gort, will be wearing to make sure her naughty bits are covered up and nothing is too…how should we put it? Miley. "We're on a network where we can't see boobs and butt," explains Harris, who previously worked on a teeny-tiny show called Sex and the City. "You'll get the feeling you're seeing some of that, but what I love about Samantha is that she's pretty out there. She's not afraid to be naked. We used to say this about Sex and the City—what's shocking about Sex and the City is not the nudity, but it's the emotional nakedness that we brought to these characters that people really responded to. I would say similarly, yes, she's outrageous, she's putting it all out there, and she will very much affect Carrie. Samantha moves in with Walt and Carrie, and I don't think Walt's quite prepared for how comfortable she is in an environment with groups of people and her own human form. You also see someone who really has not relied on anybody, start to realize that Carrie is someone she can kind of lean on."
Sebastian Won't Try to Pull the Ross Gellar "We Were on a Break" Card With Carrie: When asked about that "cheating manwhore" Sebastian—Carrie's love interest who kissed Carrie's friend Maggie in the finale--Harris spills: "She's definitely not recovering easily from [Sebastian's] betrayal and Maggie's betrayal. It is a tough thing for her, and she's not so easy to forgive. We learned with great clarity that it was just a kiss between them, and it was while he and Carrie were broken up." Still, Sebastian doesn't pull the Ross Gellar "We were on a break!" card as an excuse. "We are not doing Ross and Rachel," Harris says. "He understands how badly he screwed up and is sort of desperate to try to make amends." And of course, that all will be complicated by the hot new love interests coming their way in season two, including Molly Sims for Sebastian, and Chris Wood for Carrie. Chris plays a "young playwright who is the talk of the town," teases Harris. "He is a pretty big challenge… It feels like OK, this is a real threat!"
Molly Sims' (Cradle-Robbing) Role Was Created Specifically for Her: "We loved the idea that Sebastian is drawn to older women," Harris says of casting Molly Sims as Sebastian's new cougar-riffic fling. "We already set up that he had an affair with a teacher. I think for him, he is really hung up on Carrie, and I don't think he wants to get involved with anybody in high school that would affect his ability to get Carrie back sometime down the road. Molly was really our first choice. I mean I am always very nervous when you cast for buzz, because so often it's buzz but it doesn't necessarily help you tell story. I feel like at the end of it, it's great to get eyeballs on the show, but you want somebody who really delivers in the part. I just think Molly-- not only is she so beautiful, but she's so funny. The reason why her name even came up is because her husband is producing a film with Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz and we were just talking about her and so suddenly we just started thinking over and over again that she could be great--we wrote it for her, and it was wonderful when she said yes."
Carrie (and the Show) Are More Grown-Up This Year: "Anna Sophia and I had a bunch of conversations towards the end of last year," Harris explains. "I knew I wanted season two to be a more grown-up season, where Carrie is dealing with the betrayal of a best friend and a boyfriend, where she is sort of learning to stand on her own two feet, where Manhattan rears its head in ways good and bad, like having her purse stolen, and that the romantic-ness of New York is still there, but we're really exploring the kind of grittier parts of New York and how hard it can be on a person. I think she's going to be a little less overthink-y and kind of go for stuff, and have fun, and crawl up a fire escape and chase guys down. So it feels more grown-up to me, and Manhattan feels like a much bigger character, and we wanted them to be dealing with more adult problems. This is the year it felt like it was ready to go there."
There Is a Plan to Meet Miranda and Charlotte: "I do have an idea of how I want to introduce each character [from Sex and the City]," Harris reveals. "I really did feel like Samantha was someone Carrie could have met while she was still in high school. You know, in the books Candace [Bushnell] had made her Donna's cousin, which I just love the idea that someone you can barely stand ends up introducing you to the person who is really going to be one of the most important people in your life. That felt totally connected and real to me that we could introduce her this season. Miranda, Charlotte – I don't believe she knows them now. I don't believe they're in New York City hanging out all the time. They're in high school, not near New York. They're going to come into the city at another time in their lives. And we do have ideas about how Stanford starts coming in. He's Bennet's roommate—whether or not we'll see him this year is yet to be known, but we have some fun ways of kind of keeping up to date with where Stanford is on any given day. He's a tough roommate for Bennet."
Check out tonight's Carrie Diaries premiere at 8 p.m. on the CW, and keep checking in with our Spoiler Chat for more Carrie Diaries scoop!