it's not tv it's hbo

HBO Refused to Air This One ‘Horrifying’ Sex and the City Scene

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

For a network that regularly flexes its anything goes ethos with incestuous siblings and unremorseful murder sprees, it perhaps may come as a surprise that HBO, indeed, has been known to put its foot down when a script gets a little too crazy. Such a revelation occurred during the very first season of Sex and the City, when the network overlords refused to air a final scene that was shot between Charlotte and a man she was casually dating, who repeatedly wanted to receive blowjobs from her.

“He basically was always pushing her head down to give him oral sex. And he had this golden retriever who was always around,” the show’s creator, Darren Starr, told Vanity Fair. (Can you … um … guess where this is going?) “She basically let him have it about being offended by his insistence on just wanting a blow job. She accused him of only liking her for that and kind of stormed out. And then she walked back in and saw that his golden retriever was going down on him.”

And it wasn’t just the walking-in part that had HBO in a tizzy. “It’s sort of horrifying that we shot that,” the episode’s writer, Amy B. Harris, added. “We shot him putting peanut butter on his penis, and Charlotte walks back in like, ‘Oh, I’m being unreasonable,’ and then she sees that … I can’t believe we even thought about doing it.” Hey, it would’ve really given those Girls cum shots some perspective.

HBO Refused to Air This ‘Horrifying’ Sex and the City Scene