I never had the chance to watch “Sex in the City” during its run on HBO, but I have seen the “safer” episodes that air in syndication. It’s obvious that the hard-core raunchy portions of the show (most of which featured sex-obsessed Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall) have been heavily edited. Now more of Cattrall’s work is landing on the editing room floor.
Japanese carmaker Nissan just announced that it has pulled a raunchy commercial starring Cattrall from New Zealand television after complaints about its content.
In the ad, Cattrall reportedly purrs with excitement about Nissan’s new sedan.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was so big, I just wasn’t prepared for it?” she gushes. “The all-new Nissan Tiida makes you feel really, really, really good inside.” She tells a salesman: “Ah! That was amazing. Absolutely fabulous! I mean the great body and the way you moved it.”
New Zealand’s Television Commercial Approvals Bureau gave the okay for the double entendre-laced ad to be broadcast. However, outspoken viewers flooded the Advertising Standards Complaints Board with letters and phone calls complaining that the ad was “done in bad taste.”
Nissan ended up pulling the plug on the commercial before the board could consider the objections. “We made this decision in the interest of self-regulation and in response to public feedback,” Nissan said in a statement.
The carmaker says the reason it chose to air the ad on New Zealand TV is because the country is well known for being “liberal” when it comes to television commercial content. In fact, while a recent Australian tourism campaign that featured the slogan: “Where the bloody hell are you?” was banned in the UK, New Zealanders embraced it. The Advertising Standards Complaints Board in New Zealand reports that it did not receive a single complaint about the ad.