‘Sex and the City’ Actor Reveals Shocking Reason He Disappeared for 3 Years

Sex and the City alum Jason Lewis opened up about the surprising reason he disappeared from the spotlight for the past three years.

“I was in a space where I’ve been working on a fantasy book series. Three trilogies,” Lewis, 54, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Thursday, May 28. “[The trilogy is] closer to Lord of the Rings [than science fiction]. It’s epic fantasy. It’s my own magic system based more in physics than the soft magic of casting spells and stuff like that.”

Lewis — who played Kim Cattrall’s onscreen lover Jerry “Smith” Jerrod on Sex and the City — re-emerged via Instagram this week to reveal that he “went quiet” in 2023 “not because I had nothing to say but because I had something to do.”

“The kind of creative work that doesn’t leave room for much else, and I made my peace with that,” he shared. “It’s the kind of work that needs to find its people, though. I’m still in it, but I am far enough along now that it felt like it was time to resurface and share what I’ve been doing. More to come.”

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The social media clip featured Lewis walking along a beach, though he initially revealed little else about his current lifestyle. Lewis subsequently confirmed to THR that he left California for Costa Rica in order to focus on his writing.

“I’d been working on it for quite a while and I found myself at a point where I knew it was large when I started, but it just kept expanding and growing into this bigger and bigger world as I plotted it and figured it out,” he explained. “I literally sat down with pen and paper and did kind of a ‘what do I need, what do I want’ design-of-life list.”

Lewis went on, “Certainly at the top of the list was the space to do this because this is me on a journey of discovery as much as anything. I’ve never written novels before this, so I don’t have a bunch of feathers in my cap to lean on. I wanted a healthy lifestyle and access to good food. I surf, and being right next to a beach is very easy motivation for me to stay healthy. Sometimes you don’t want to go to the gym, but I always like to go play in the water. And I also wanted to learn Spanish.”

The actor shared that he has “outlined three trilogies” that are “each set in the same world in different eras.”

“I chose to start at the end. I’m on book seven,” he revealed. “I’m on the fourth draft of it. Well, 3.5. The first draft is really just a 150-page summary.”

As for his lifestyle away from the spotlight, Lewis said that he tries to keep a regimented schedule based around his writing.

“I usually get up around 4 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “I do my thing and walk the beach or run the beach if the surf isn’t good yet and then have my coffee and settle in and get to the desk and have a session and then have breakfast and then go back to the desk. Depending on what I’m doing revision-wise, sometimes I can get a little bit more words, but I try and get anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 words on the page a day.”

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Lewis first found fame as a model before being cast as Smith Jerrod on Sex and the City. His portrayal of Samantha Jones’ supportive and devoted boyfriend became so popular that he was brought back in both Sex and the City movie spinoffs.

He later landed guest roles on How I Met Your Mother and House before competing on Dancing With the Stars season 31 in 2022. (Lewis and his professional partner Peta Murgatroyd were eliminated first in season 31.)