Kristen Johnston has admitted she was not sober during her iconic “Sex and the City” window fall scene.
The 58-year-old actress made the confession Thursday on Chelsea Handler’s “Dear Chelsea” podcast, revealing she was deep in addiction while playing socialite Lexi Featherston in the 2004 Season 6 episode “Splat.” Johnston, whose younger sister Julie Herschede died in 2020 after her own addiction battle, traced her substance struggles back to childhood.
“I was an addict since I was a kid,” she shared on the podcast. “Even though I obviously wasn’t doing it then. But I just needed to escape always. I did not like being in my skin.”
Johnston described her state during the HBO shoot in blunt terms. “I was a hot mess,” she told Handler. She elaborated on her behavior at the time: “I was just kind of messy. Like late at night after I was doing a lot of theater, a lot of drinking after theater, lots of wine, the occasional foray into cocaine, but not like [Lexi].”
She added with a dark laugh, “But i knew what I was talking about — let’s just put it that way.”
The “3rd Rock from the Sun” alum detailed the consuming nature of active addiction. “You don’t realize until you quit how much time, if you’re a real active addict like I was, how much time is spent figuring stuff out, how to get this, getting that thing, getting this delivered,” she continued. “You know, it takes a lot of energy.”
Johnston’s memoir “Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster,” published in 2013, documented her alcohol and pill addiction, which began in high school and escalated to two bottles of wine nightly at its worst. On Handler’s show, she noted that traditional AA programs “weren’t for me,” crediting close friends in New York with helping her finally achieve sobriety.
When Handler pressed her on how long she has been clean, Johnston replied, “This time, 10 years. But there was a little burble about 10 years ago, and then before that was 10 years. So altogether, probably 20.”
The actress has grown comfortable with the lasting pop-culture footprint of her single-episode turn. She said last year that she expects the role to outlive her. “It probably will go on my gravestone, that quote of ‘New York is over,'” she said. “And you know what? I’m totally OK with that, if that is my legacy, Lexi Featherston.”
In the “Splat” episode, Lexi Featherston — Carrie Bradshaw’s old friend — launches into a theatrical rant about New York’s decline after being told she cannot smoke inside a crowded penthouse party, then stumbles backward through an open window and falls 18 stories to her death. The scene became one of the darkly comic highlights of the series’ final season.
Johnston reflected on the void sobriety initially created. “But at a certain point, at like five o’clock, you’re like, ‘What do people do at night if they don’t get drunk?'” she recalled. She explained that recovery required fundamentally restructuring her time: “You have to just think of other things to do with your time.”
The “Austin Powers” actress joins a growing number of performers re-examining high-profile work done under the influence, though her candor about the specific production marks a rare instance of naming the project directly.
