Chris Noth, who’s still best known for playing Mr. Big on Sex and the City, is ready to repent for all the harm that series did to New York. At the opening-night party for Talk Radio, he lamented, “What makes me really sick is how New York now looks like a bad imitation of Sex and the City. Meatpacking is a good example of just how fucked up it is. You can’t have a city that’s interesting where the only people living in it are rich. When I came here as a kid, as a young adult, you could get lost—many different worlds collided. You cannot say that today.” And his success has done the same thing to him. “As an actor, you can maybe move someone, make them laugh, make them think,” he says. “As a celebrity, you’re nothing but a snapshot for somebody to put above their urinal.” So don’t go and call him Mr. Big, okay? “It’s rude! When people call me ‘Mr. Big,’ I can’t help feeling a kind of contempt.”

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Table of Contents: March 26, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!