Chris Noth has been fired from CBS crime drama the “The Equalizer” after three women came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against him.
The former “Sex and the City” star, 67, will be seen early next month in one more episode that has already been filmed. In “The Equalizer,” Noth played an old friend of Queen Latifah’s character who runs a private security company after years as a CIA director.
The announcement is the latest blow to Noth’s career after he was accused by three women in the past week of sexual assault in incidents going back to the early 2000s. On Sunday, A3 Artists Agency confirmed that Noth has been dropped as a client after signing with the talent agency in October.
And in a statement to the New York Post on Friday, Entertainment Arts Research CEO Bernard Rubin said his company would no longer purchase Noth’s tequila brand Ambhar Tequila.
“We thought it would be in our best interest to withdraw from the transaction,” Rubin told the outlet. “It would have been disastrous for us.”
The accusations were published days after Noth’s character, Mr. Big, died of a heart attack in the premiere episode of HBO Max’s “Sex and the City” sequel, “And Just Like That …”
The latest accuser, a 30-year-old tech executive, said the alleged encounter happened in 2010, when she was working as a hostess and lounge singer at the Manhattan restaurant Da Marino. She was 18 at the time and Noth was 55.
The account in the Daily Beast from Ava, who was granted a pseudonym, details an encounter with Noth in the back office of the restaurant as she prepared her late-night exit after work. Ava provided her story to the Daily Beast on Dec. 16 and said she wrote her account of the assault in October 2020.
In a report published Dec. 16 in The Hollywood Reporter, two women named only by pseudonyms, Lily and Zoe, accused Noth of sexual assault in separate incidents from the early 2000s.
“The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false,” Noth said in a statement following the THR report. “These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago — no always means no — that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
Zoe, who reached out to THR in October, told the outlet she met the actor in 2004 when she was 22 and working at a “high-profile firm where Noth and other celebrities regularly had business,” THR reported. She said he flirted with her and eventually invited her to the pool of a West Hollywood building before asking her to come to his apartment, where she said he raped her.
Zoe said she went with a friend to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she told staff she had been assaulted but would not tell the police who had assaulted her out of fear of retribution and not being believed.
Lily, whom THR said contacted the news outlet in August, said she met Noth in a New York City nightclub in 2005, when she was 25. She said he asked her to dinner before inviting her back to his apartment, where she “cautiously entertained” him kissing her but grew uncomfortable with his sexual advances and and was “kind of crying” as he had sex with her. Lily said she felt “totally violated” afterward and told a friend but refused to alert the police.
The Los Angeles Police Department checked into whether there was an open investigation involving Noth and found none, police Sgt. Hector Guzman said. The special victims bureau of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department also has no open investigation, sheriff’s Capt. Richard Ruiz said.
Noth dubbed the timing of the accusations questionable as the report was published a week after the premiere of the highly anticipated “Sex and the City” reboot. “And Just Like That” shocked fans when it killed off Mr. Big with a post-Peloton ride heart attack that launched the actor back into the pop-cultural zeitgeist and landed him a quick-turn ad with the stationary bike company.
Peloton scrubbed the video ad from its social media platforms Thursday following the allegations.
Since taking on the role of Mr. Big, the hotshot executive who serves as Carrie’s main love interest (and later, husband) throughout “Sex and the City,” Noth went on to roles in “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “The Good Wife” and reprised his Mr. Big role in the 2008 and 2010 “SATC” movies.
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