NEW YORK, N.Y. – About a year ago, Lindsey Gort’s name came up for a part but the casting director said she wasn’t right for it because she was more of a young Kim Cattrall-type.

Now Gort is playing a young Samantha Jones — Cattrall’s character in “Sex and the City” — on The CW’s “The Carrie Diaries” (Friday, 8 p.m. EDT).

“When the part came up, my manager was like, ‘Hey, remember when you said she was a young Kim Cattrall-type? Well, you’re looking for that right now so you should come see her,’” Gort said in a recent interview.

“It’s such an iconic character, and I’m such a huge fan of the show,” she said.

Set in the 1980s, “The Carrie Diaries” stars AnnaSophia Robb as teen Carrie Bradshaw, who lives in Connecticut with her widowed father and younger sister. The show is based on novels by Candace Bushnell, as was “Sex and the City.”

Gort’s version of Samantha Jones is a lot like the one in the ’90s HBO series and the two movies that followed.

The big difference, Gort says, is that Samantha is “in her early 20s and is not a career woman yet, so she doesn’t have her Birkin bags and her Manolos yet. She’s figuring herself out, trying to figure out where she belongs in this world and having a good time while doing that.”

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Alicia Rancilio covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar

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Online:

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/the-carrie-diaries/