Nearly 20 years after the series finale of Sex and the City, the popular HBO series has returned to the conversation this past week with the revival And Just Like That bringing back Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and briefly, Chris Noth’s Mr. Big. Noth’s appearance on the show led the actor to book an ad with Peloton in reference to his character’s big twist. But the recent media attention also inspired two women to speak out about past sexual assault allegations against the actor. And now in response, Peloton has deleted the ad starring Noth.
The Peloton ad, which was produced by Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort marketing company and reportedly cost over $80,000 to produce, has now been deleted from the fitness company’s Twitter, Instagram and YouTube page. A spokesperson for the company additionally said this to The Hollywood Reporter:
Every single sexual assault accusation must be taken seriously. We were unaware of these allegations when we featured Chris Noth in our response to HBO’s reboot. As we seek to learn more, we have stopped promoting this video and archived related social posts.
Chris Noth’s most famous role as Sex and the City’s Mr. Big marked its return in the HBO series And Just Like That, but with a curve ball. It’s revealed in the show that Mr. Big suffers a heart attack while riding a Peloton bike and dies. The scene made for problematic product placement for the company, leading to 5 percent of Peloton’s stocks to fall. In turn, Peloton enlisted Ryan Reynolds’ viral commercial talent to do crowd control with a 40-second ad featuring Chris Noth’s Mr. Big and the fitness company’s instructor Jess King.
The ad was considered a success for Peloton following the unfortunate And Just Like That reference, but with Chris Noth going viral, two anonymous women allege that his recent media attention reminded them of past encounters with the actor they classify as sexual assault. One incident reportedly occurred in Los Angeles back in 2004 and the other one in New York in 2015. As one of the women said, “seeing that he was reprising his role in Sex and the City set something off” in her and she decided to “got public with who he is.”
Chris Noth has already responded to the allegations, claiming that they are “categorically false,” sharing his views on “no always means no” along with saying that he believed these encounters were “consensual.” It’s unclear where the allegations will go from here, but Noth is also signed on to star in two films Someday Sometime and Brooklyn All American, both of which have reportedly yet to be filmed. New episodes of And Just Like That premiere on HBO Max on Thursdays.
