Critics may be tearing it apart at the seams, but Sex and the City 2 still promises to be the biggest movie of the upcoming weekend. This is due in no small part to the unrelenting tabloid buzz generated in the months, weeks and days leading up to its release.

Because of all the tabloid attention, star Kim Cattrall says that she and director Michael Patrick King went out of their way to fool the paparazzi and fans by creating fake storylines for her character Samantha.

Starpulse reports that after Cattrall was photographed carrying a copy of her script by tabloid shutterbugs, plot details were leaked to the press. “We were shooting on the street and the first day it was the four of us back together again and the paparazzi were everywhere,” the actress recalls. “We had to be so careful with plot lines. One day I went to the set with my script in my hand, and some paparazzi blew up the script and gave away the storyline.”

The actress says the incident gave her and the director the idea to start messing with people’s heads. “I said to Michael Patrick King, ‘They’re gonna ruin it for the fans!’ He said, ‘I think we should play a little trick on them.’ I said, ‘OK, what are we gonna do? What about pregnancy, they’ll freak out if Samantha is pregnant!’ He said, ‘No, no, no, let’s marry her.’

The idea set the wheels in motion and soon a conspiracy was afoot to fool the fans. “(Designer) Patricia Fields went to a bridal shop and bought three wedding dresses,” Cattrall says. “I tried them on and then it was all around the world: ‘Samantha’s getting married!’”

The ruse may have worked, but there’s still no fooling critics who have not been kind to the latest installment of the SATC franchise. Reviews have ranged from negative to ferocious, with Lindy West of Seattle’s The Stranger writing perhaps the harshest assessment yet, calling the film “essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.”