Sex and Sarah Jessica Parker
- From: The Daily Telegraph (Sunday magazine)
- May 11, 2008
IT’S a classic New York winter’s day on the edge of Central Park: grey sky, bare trees, and couples in carriages lapping up the romance. Top-hatted doormen usher guests in and out of the lavish five-star hotels lining Central Park South. It’s a scene right out of any movie - or TV show - that boasts New York City as a character. A show such as, say, Sex and the City.
Drawing closer to the Ritz-Carlton, however, it looks as if the entrance is surrounded by a swarm of locusts. Their buzz grows louder as the pack grows.
The paparazzi has clearly got wind of the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker is expected here today (for, among other things, an interview with this magazine) and, while she might not draw quite an impressive crowd on an ordinary weekday, this occasion is a little different.
Haven’t you heard? There’s a movie coming out. If you’re a fan of the TV series, you’re probably even counting down the days until Sex and the City: The Movie finally hits cinemas on June 5.
What none of us knows is what this film will mean for its beloved protagonists.
Is Samantha still stalking Manhattan like a cat on a hot tin roof? Does Charlotte finally have a baby?
Are Miranda and Steve still together?
Does Carrie Bradshaw marry Mr Big? And, in 2008, can the fabulous four possibly still be drinking Cosmopolitans?
Alas, the answers to these questions are under closer guard than the royal helicopter.
Details on the fates of the characters are under 24-hour lock and key so, in lieu of any other source of information, photographers are standing in the cold for hours to snap the movie’s biggest star.
There’s only one problem. She’s at home, sick.
It seems not even moviestars are immune to the dreary cold that’s knocked everyone else in the city about.
But, ever the professional, Parker, 43, reschedules for the following day.
Any tedium at having to regroup a day later dissipates the instant Parker appears in front of me with a friendly ‘let’s get to it’ manner. She appears tiny in her wool Versace dress and high Brian Atwood heels.
With a long strand of pearls, a shorter string of black leather around her neck, a silver cuff and dark nails, she looks nothing like Carrie Bradshaw, but still every inch a woman who loves fashion.
Hardly surprising, when her resume includes endorsements for brands such as Gap and Garnier; her two Coty fragrances, Lovely and Covet; and her clothing line for US discount retailer Steve & Barry’s, Bitten by SJP.
When talking about any of her many projects (there’s also her charity work, producing and, of course, motherhood), Parker is enthusiastic.
But back to the SATC movie.
Even before the series ended, there was talk of a movie. But in the months after the finale - when it looked as though Carrie wound up in the arms of Mr Big at last - the plan seemed to fall apart.
The rumour mill said Kim Cattrall wanted a movie pay cheque on par with Parker’s, but her request was denied. “We all worked for six years, 18 hours a day,” said Cattrall at the time.
“It would be a shame to come back and not reward the actors who had so much to do with shaping the show.”
Her publicist also intimated it was a difficult time in Cattrall’s life (her father had been diagnosed with dementia), and downplayed the financial angle.
Today, Cattrall will only say it was the great script and the devoted fans that brought her back on board, but to hear Parker talk about her passion for SATC, it sounds as though she wielded considerable influence in reuniting the cast.
“I never, in a million years, thought I could,” she says.
“Our goal was to get the four women on that set. Lo and behold, we did, and it was thrilling.”
(Despite the diplomatic front, rumours of icy behaviour between Parker and Cattrall on the film’s set refused to die.)
One person who freely admits he was happy to be back, though, is Chris Noth, who plays Parker’s onscreen love, Mr Big.
“It was as if no time had passed between the end of the series and the beginning of the movie,” he says. (Sarah) makes acting so easy for her partner because she’s so completely present in the moment.”
Jennifer Hudson, who joins the movie’s cast as Carrie’s assistant, Louise, is also full of praise for her co-star.
“She couldn’t have been more welcoming,” says Hudson. “Sarah likes to sing a lot.
And I love to sing and I love to listen to people sing. So it was great. She’s a real fun person to be around.”
Clearly, it was a joy for Parker and co to slip back into their characters’ Manolos, four years on. But was Parker just as happy with where the film leaves Carrie when the credits roll?
“Yeah,” she replies quickly, then seamlessly answers a question I didn’t actually ask.
“Everybody’s at different stages of sex in their life in this movie.
“It was (director) Michael Patrick King’s intention to show different relationships and where people are and the truth of the cycle - what happens in relationships after a period of time.”
If the trailer is anything to go by (spoiler alert), Carrie and Mr Big disagree over the size of their wedding and something or someone causes a wedding-gowned Carrie to drop her mobile phone and dash out of the New York Public Library into a cab.
Meanwhile, Carrie tells us in the trailer’s voice-over, “Real life always has a twist.
I can’t believe I was running around New York thinking I was finally getting my happy ending.”
Whatever happens to Carrie and Big, it wasn’t just their romance that made Carrie such an icon for women of all ages.
It was her cool job, her fabulous wardrobe, her loyal girlfriends, her snappy one-liners, her flaws - her life. Women the world over related to Carrie.
They idolised her for her smarts - and her shoes.
“I know,” laughs Parker. “I idolise her, too. But she’s made different life choices (to me).
That’s why she’s been amazing to play. I’ve basically been living two lives for 10 years, and it’s incredibly satisfying to get to lead both these lives because they’re very different.”
In real life, rather than running around Manhattan in designer heels, Parker is more likely to be caught shopping at her local supermarket in Greenwich Village, sporting jeans and Ugg boots, her hair frizzy and her face bare.
A wife - she married actor Matthew Broderick in 1997 – and a mum, she has decidedly different priorities to Carrie.
“I love clothes,” she says. “But now that I’m a working mother, when I take my son to school, my look is the last thing I care about.”
Parker and Broderick welcomed son James Wilke in 2002, with Parker covering up her pregnancy with billowing dresses on SATC. She admits it was tough returning to work once she became a mum.
“I felt conflicted about whether I’d be able to be all things to all people,” she says. “Am I being a good mother? Is he with me enough?
Is my mind on my work enough?”
But the workaholic loved the shift in priorities her son’s birth brought to her life, and has talked openly about wanting more kids.
In 2004, she quipped to Oprah, “Someone once told me that children are like heroin. You always want more,” but she has since learnt to deflect the question – in her signature gracious way, of course.
One topic Parker has been more vocal about is the pressure society puts on women to get back into shape, post-pregnancy.
“I was forced to get in shape,” she says of her return to work.
“But I’m sort of reluctant to talk about how, because there’s a standard that’s unrealistic to me. I’m lucky I have money for childcare and private work-out sessions.”
Similarly, Parker doesn’t like to hold her and Broderick’s marriage up as an ideal even though, at 11 years and counting, they’re veterans by Hollywood standards.
She says he’s “lethally charming” and “the funniest person I’ve ever met”, but admits it takes work to keep a marriage going.
As parents, Parker and Broderick are often bamboozled by cameras while walking with five-year-old James near their home. “We struggle with it every morning on the way to school,” she says.
“We have this silent battle going with the paparazzi - sometimes not so silent.”
But there are greater concerns, too.
“More worrisome in the long run, for him - and for many children who have parents who are affluent - is the disadvantage it puts them at, in a funny way.
I didn’t grow up with money, and I think that was really lucky. I think, sometimes children of privilege don’t have that same instinct to really work.
That’s my greater concern for my son. That he not assume, or feel entitled to (anything), but to really create a life for himself. That’s hard to do when you have money, because your instinct is to just give it to him.”
Parker says she’s more likely to spend money on food or family trips, than on a $400 pair of shoes.
Her caution stems from her modest upbringing, first in Nelsonville, Ohio, and then New York City. With three full siblings and four half-siblings, Parker learnt early on to share.
As a young girl, she worked hard in the Broadway production of Annie, and then in the ’80s sitcom Square Pegs. Parker was all about discipline, which paid off when she moved into film, with Girls Just Want to Have Fun, a cult hit among teenage girls.
Roles in LA Story, Honeymoon in Vegas and Ed Wood followed. But, despite high-profile romances with John Kennedy Jr and Robert Downey Jr, Parker didn’t hit the A-list until Sex and the City first aired in 1998. From then on, everything changed.
Between SATC the series and SATC: The Movie, Parker made a string of movies that didn’t quite set the box office on fire, including the romantic comedies The Family Stone and Failure to Launch.
Is she worried about life after Carrie, take two, considering what’s on offer?
“I don’t worry at this point, because I guess I’ve just had good fortune,” she says.
“There’s always the theatre.”
She also hopes the movie studios will start making more movies for older women.\
“You can’t stop Jodie Foster from getting older,” she says, “and she’s always going to make interesting choices. (That) bodes well for the rest of us.”
Not that it’s easy being a woman in Hollywood, where people pursue youth at all costs. “It’s hard to compete when your peer group is starting to look younger as you age, you know?” she says with a wry laugh.
“But maybe, unlike some of my colleagues, I need to move my face. I talk with my hands a lot and I talk with my eyebrows a lot.
If I couldn’t move them, it would be the same as someone tying my hands behind my back. I don’t know how you express (yourself).”
Parker seems to be trying to remain diplomatic, but then she blurts out, “I don’t like how everyone’s looking.
I mean, do you like how everyone’s looking? Doesn’t it shock you? It shocks me. And I think, boy, I don’t know where it ends. But I do understand the desire. Wrinkles are bothersome.
“It’s not that I love lines, and it’s not that I hate them,” she says.
“I guess I’m not willing to take the steps to be rid of them completely. Believe me, it’s complicated not to do it. Never say never but, for the time being, I’d like to do as little as possible.”
Portraying sexy women in their 30s and 40s was always part of SATC’s success – and what made it so influential.
Then, of course, there were the clothes.
“Rules should be thrown out the window,” says Parker of fashion SATC-style.
“The idea about what’s the right and wrong way to dress just doesn’t apply to real human beings. I learnt that from (costume designer) Pat Field, because she says, ‘Screw all the rules.
Take colours, clash them, mismatch them, don’t have anything match.’ I thought, oh my gosh, I don’t have to match? How incredible! It was so liberating.”
Despite loving the big flowers and the shoes, and even that tutu she sported in the show’s opening credits, Parker admits she’s just like the rest of us when it comes to comparing herself to Carrie.
She doesn’t think she’s as witty as Miss Bradshaw, and isn’t even sure the two would be friends.
“I don’t know if she’d be interested in my friendship,” she muses. “I don’t think I’m colourful enough.
“I always think she’s that girl who would have intimidated me in high school. I’m not cool like her, you know?” SM
