A leap of faith - interview with Kristin Davis

Marie Claire, Dec, 2001 by Ty Wenger

WE CHALLENGED SEX AND THE CITY'S SENSIBLE CHARLOTTE TO FACE DOWN HER TWO BIGGEST FEARS: HEIGHIS AND SNAKES. GERONIMOOOO!

IN THE BAD DREAM, KRISTIN DAVIS IS FALLING.

She's walking in a Victorian mansion. It's dark and spooky. A camera crew trails her, waiting to document the terror that Kristin senses is waiting around every corner. Even swamped in her fear, she's afraid she's blocking the camera and ruining the scene-an actress to the end. Suddenly, at the top of a long flight of stairs, she turns, loses her balance, and falls...and falls...and falls...

I'm thinking of this dream as I watch Kristin shuffle to the open rear hatch of a perfectly good airplane and perch on the edge, preparing to jump out. From the look of abject horror in her eyes, she's thinking about it, too. We're 10,000 feet high. The wind is whipping by the door. And Kristin Davis is about to leap headfirst into her worst nightmare.

Earlier that day, when we arrived at a skydiving school in upstate New York, I doubted that Kristin would even get on that plane, let alone jump out of it. And, really, why would she? HBO, the network that pays her a hefty seven-figure salary per season to costar on its Emmy-winning show Sex and the City, has discouraged her from going. Her fellow cast members--the ones she's "as close to as sisters"--don't even know she's here. And last night, before she went to bed, her mother reminded her that her stepsister--a commercial pilot, no less--was so terrified when she tried to skydive herself that her instructor had to push her out of the plane.

Oh, and did we mention that she also has a history of fainting?

"As you can imagine," Kristin says, "I didn't sleep very well."

Here we are, at a tiny airstrip about 30 minutes from Woodstock. It's a cross between a hippie commune and an Air Force base: scruffy tents, dilapidated trailers, a canopy covering a central staging area. We are ushered into the "classroom," a rusty, broken-down school bus with a TV monitor. To the left of the TV sits a small statue of the Grim Reaper. (I am not making this up!) Inside, an instructional video is cued; it feels more like a sitcom's bloopers segment: The tape's cursory demonstrations of arching and landing are aborted when the instructors fall over laughing; a soundtrack of Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix plays throughout, adding to the whole "we were stoned when we shot this" vibe. None of this, mind you, seems particularly educational.

The waivers we all have to sign, however-- with their overblown "you die, it's on you" language--deliver a dose of inescapable reality. I consider briefly if this is the right time to mention to Kristin that about 35 Americans perish each year skydiving. I think better of it. Besides, I'm going to be jumping with her. Why spook myself?

"My lawyer would kill me if he knew I was signing this!" she exclaims, flashing her most plucky and courageous grin but appearing a bit pale as she clambers out of the bus in her jeans and T-shirt. Still, we've been told we will receive a two-hour training course before we actually jump with our tandem-diving partner, so there is no need to panic--yet.

"Next jump group, you're going in 10 minutes! Get suited up!" yells a passing instructor. Maybe panic is entirely appropriate.

"But what about the two-hour class?" Kristin asks.

"Two-hour class? Who told you that? Time to suit up!" the instructor bellows back.

The corners of Kristin s mouth curl down. "This is bad," she says. "I'm not ready for this. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. As an actress, there's nothing worse than not knowing your cues.

She's clearly ready to back out. Then Geoff appears.

Geoff the Dashing British Instructor (GDBI), masculine in that Old Spice--cologne kind of way, sweeps in. Six-foot-six and 225 pounds with a crew cut, deep-set blue eyes, and character-enhancing scars, Geoff will be Kristin's diving partner. He is the kind of Marlboro man with whom any woman would jump out of a plane--or out of the space shuttle.

I turn to Kristin, who looks relieved. I'm tempted to ask what Alec Baldwin, her well-publicized current beau, would think of GDBI but again hold my tongue. "I'm an actress who likes a strong, communicative director, and Geoff just became my director," she says.

And that is how 36-year-old Kristin Davis, a woman mortally afraid of falling, ended up here 15 minutes later--in the hatch of a deHavilland Twin Otter plane, poised to plummet two miles to the ground with a mountain of a man strapped to her back. As the plane climbs to an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, she and Geoff inch to the edge of the open door. I watch as he reminds her to keep her feet together. Kristin's mind happily latches onto this tidbit: Feet together. Feet together. Feet together. And then, in a flash, they jump into the sky.

There's a curious phenomenon that a skydiver experiences during his or her first jump: total sensory overload. It's impossible to come to grips with the sensation of unbridled gravity, the feeling of falling at 120 miles per hour. And so, Kristin's mind does the natural thing. It goes fzzzzzzzzt.