Sarah Jessica Parker

hear this in homes all over the country. In six seasons and two feature films, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha navigated the complexities of single life in New York City. When HBO's Sex in the City wrapped in two thousand four, it left millions of empty Cosmopolitan glasses in its wake and changed brunch conversations forever. All four of its actresses became major stars, most notably the show's narrator and my guest today, Sarah Jessica Parker. I Am someone who is

looking for love, real love. Parker's professional career began long before she became Carrie Bradshaw. At eleven, she made her Broadway debut in The Innocence. She went on to star in films opposite Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage, and Steve Martin, but Sex in the City brought Parker a different kind of success. Parker the actress became Parker the celebrity, fashion icon television producer. Today, Sarah Jessica Parker is also a mother. She has three kids under third Team. The decision to

become a mother was not one Parker took lightly. When you're one of eight children and there isn't a lot and you are struggling, you don't think that this I'd like to replicate this. Yeah, you don't want to give your siblings your real address? No, you think, gosh, I can't wait to have my own space. I can't wait to own address that was mine to begin with. That wasn't seven or eight other people's. You have that now, though?

Don't you address that your own? Do? And I understand that actually that isn't as fulfilling as one might have imagined as an eight year old. But I really wanted a lack of chaos. I wanted I enjoyed it my siblings and I'm in I'm mad and really quite taken with them now and have been for many years. But I didn't think at the time that I wanted to recreate that. When it last I was on my own. You know, it was insane in our home and in

your childhood. You started working very young, you were you were a child actor your eight and what do you remember about your childhood. I'm not certain how we sort of recreate how we felt about our childhood, because I wouldn't want it any other way. I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to sort of fix the things that were painful, or change the disappointments to triumphs or the struggles to ease.

I remember everything about my childhood, and I think the memories are vivid because it was a very vivid life. It was a colorful, energetic, unpredictable, exciting, scary, sad, ebulent life. And um, I think I benefited from that in countless ways, far more than I would have if it had been easy and care free and without concern and worry. I think I loved working because it allowed me something of my own time to myself, something that I felt was mine.

Were your siblings performers, any of them? My brother Toby was an actor, um, and was started working before me, and then we eventually worked together a number of times. And I think he would also say that he loved this independence from his siblings money. Knowing that we had this, we were creating like a past. Remember your past. Look at the bank you you and I have that in Comay. So all of those were wonderful. Going home was a

little dreary after a day of independence. But I think about days that I didn't want to be in my home, and I think about days that I got to be out working as an actor, that you know, getting through the days that that I found not always super pleasant. Um, I earned those days away. I earned the five dollars they gave me from my dinner money or this opportunity to pretend to be somebody else. So I liked the balance of the suffering and the reward. Is that crazy? No? No,

I think that. I remember when when I worked and I got a job, and I remember I just felt strange. I mean they I did a television soap opera in New York. There was the lowest rated soap opera. I did the Doctors on NBC before they were canceled. Were you a doctor? No, I was the bastard son. I was a swindling son of a doctor, this scion, and I get this job they pay you. I was twenty and I get the job and they pay me the

minimum and I get a check for whatever. Like the first year, I remember sitting there thinking I make more money than my dad, who's been teaching for twenty eight years at a public school. And I felt funny. I felt weird, Like people will always sometimes smack you or swat you and say, what do you know? You're out of touch because you all you people are so overpaid And there's a part of me sits there and yeah, I mean it is kind of crazy, but but I

have to ask you a question. Wait, let me just go back, because I think it is curious when you're criticized or or there's a conversation around sort that you might be out of touch or you're not you know,

you don't recognize what it means to work hard. On one hand, you can say it is true, um, lots of people make absurd amounts of money, and none of it's just none of it makes sense and none of it's fair and it's but I think the accusation of your being out of touch or you're not aware of what it means to work hard, that's the part of that kind of charge that I am most frustrated by.

Because a lot of people I know who work in entertainment, theater, show business didn't come from anything and simply worked incredibly hard. And we're willing to work hard and earn nothing, and every now and then a job comes along that does pay and that you know, that's wonderful, and almost everybody I know is thrilled and appreciative. So the idea that you know, we're sort of blithely going through life, you know, not aware of um out of whack it is and

how lucky we are too. And then and the other part of that I find is that other people have jobs where there's a meritorious system of a sentencing. You go to high school, you do well, you get the good s, A T s, you get the g p A, you get the right scores, You go to Harvard, and in our business you can be great and do great work. It doesn't mean anything. Do the mean you're gonna move up.

Sometimes the most successful people are not the most talented people in terms of the kind of complexity they're acting. If you will, Yeah, and I think I'm predictable nature, I mean, and it's it's impossible, you know, to compare career trajectories and paths and choices. But there are things that are you know, obviously very unstable about making these

life choices. And and most people, you know, really everybody I admire basically has not really you know, hit the pay dirt the way that I think they should have. And so, you know, I'm particularly sensitive to the idea that I that I'm not aware of what it means to work hard, and that I'm not aware of the imbalance of you know, the sort of It's not you know, for me, what is interesting is you and men. Eventually

you become very famous. It's you, it's Mary Tyler Moore, it's Gene Stapleton, and you become one of the most prominent women in the history of television. Before Sex in the City, when someone hired you, what were they hiring you for? Well, they were usually hiring me to play uh. For a while, I was the cerebral best friend of the pretty lead girl, subversive or UH. Could be a clever person, witty, um, maybe bitter, uh, you know, funny, buoyant, um, wise, cracking,

but not overly confident UM. So that I found enormous pleasure in and I felt, why would I complain? You know this is the career. This is the journeyman career I always dreamed of having. This was the career I wanted, And so that was the kind of Those were the roles, never the lead, you know, foot loose. I was the spirited, best end of Lorie Singer. She was the beautiful, withholding,

I don't know, desirable lead. And but one once again I will say, and I couldn't mean this, And it's not that I'm looking back on it fondly and kind of creating affection for a time or a place. I really I thought I had it all. I would work in the theater all the time, I would play these smaller parts in movies, I would do television shows. Um, I thought I had everything a person could ever want and hope for. And I would never have been so bold as to as to say I did want more

than that. I assumed that the leads were really only made for a particular type of girl and then woman, and I understood that I just wasn't going to ever be that person. And I talked myself into believing that the roles that I got to play were more complex people. They were more nuanced, they were more interesting. Sometimes that was the case, not always, but the opportunity to work, to move from job to job was the best because I was constantly figuring out new relationships, new people. How

did they work? How do I work? What do I want to do? Like they do? What? I think? You make a lot of films, I remember that, but all the people you could those days of like running to a pay phone checking your voicemail I mean sorry, checking your answering machine. It was like you're like, oh, there's a lot of calls. It's a lot of calls. You have thirty nine messaging messages. Just the potential of that

next job. Also the romantic relationships that exist when you're moving that quickly and you're young, and you're I don't know all of it. I think was I couldn't have planned it any better in a way. And then what happened? And then um, Kevin Euvaine, my agent of twenty or thirty years now, rang me and said, there's this pilot script a guy named Darren starred you know who and star as. I said, yes, I know, certainly do Melrose Place, um Beverly Hills nine at two and oh he he said,

he's written this pilot. He says he's written it with you in mind. So Starr told you, Vane, he wrote this with you in mind. Correct. Kevin Evane told me that that's what Darren Starr had had shared with him. Would I read the script? Um? I read the script right away. I was really kind of confounded by the idea that I was a voice that would have come to mind because she was so this part of Carrie

Bradshaw was so unlike anything I'd ever played. And the book had come out before before um, I would say maybe a year and a half, two years to the script. He had been clever enough to go to Candice and say, can I buy the rights to this and use this as a jumping off point. I had been sent the book anonymously, I mean just you know, as publishers sometimes send people books. I was familiar with this column. I thought it was a really clever, interesting take on sexual

pole ticks. I love the way she wrote. And so I met with Darren, and you know, I was busy. I was doing a Broadway musical at the time. I was shooting movies during the day and going to the theater at night, and you know, had two or three movies coming out, and he said to me, you know, I would love for you to consider this. We met at eat on the Upper east Side, which I thought

was kind of a fancy place. It's expensive, you know, the menu is pretty dear like everything on the menu, and uh, I said, you know, I don't feel comfortable doing nudity. I don't. I think we can be more thoughtful about this language. She's a writer. Does she have to use the effort? It Isn't she more thoughtful about? You know? He kept just saying to everything, every possible obstacle I can throw it his way to talk him

out of hiring me. He had a relatively great convincing And have you been successful at talking people out of hiring you previously? I think I'd given people lots of other ideas, like don't you think Patty clarkson the same one. I'm always offered up having Sarks And because I don't know about you, but I always have these actors in my head that I think are more deserving or better

Frank simply better. I always I always think that. And I always think that there were like four or five other three named actresses that either they may be meant to go to first, and that when I showed up there like we didn't mean that, we meant Mary Louise Parker. But anyway, he was very convincing and um and really, uh just so tenation. He just never let the idea go. And and I said, oh, and by the way, between you and me and I'm actually getting married, I think

next week. It was I think I'm getting married next week on my night off. He got the day off. We're gonna get married. So I don't want to start shooting until after we get married. And he said, that's fine, we'll figure it out. We'll push it a few days. And so I went and did this pilot and, um, you know, are you ready to do a TV show? No? And to be honest, at the time, HBO is a very different network. It was a place that was a primarily mailed, mainated um uh network. It was there was

heavy on the sports and boxing. There were a few scripted shows dream on, UM a football show. Um there was a football show about a football team. You know. It was skewed towards the male audience that existed for the for their sports, their great special sports events. And so I thought, you know, I'll do this pilot and I loved. I thought the script was spectacled, and actually I gave it to Matthew and my oldest brother Pippin, and they both read it and said, without a doubt,

you should do this. You've never been offered anything like this. The writing is is really really good, it's smart, it's different. There's nothing else that they could think of that was like it. So I did the pilot. Went on with my life and one day I was walking down the street and I ran into Merrill poster and she said to me. I think I was on my way to see a play and she said, oh, I I saw your television show. And I said her, what what television show? And she said, did you do a pilot it called

Sexton City. I was like and I literally said, oh, that's right, I did. And she said it's good and I said it is. I haven't seen it and she said, oh no, I just thought I think it's really good. I said, okay. So after Merril post the pilot, what happens next? I think eventually I saw it or was forced to see it, and um, there was this discussion of it, you know, going to series, and I then tried to get out of it. I went to Kevin Euvaine, and I went to, uh, who's a great television agent

at CIA who ran the televison Lee. Oh God forgive me. Um. Anyway, I went to them, called a meeting and said to them, gentlemen, you have to help me get out of this. I don't want to do a television series. I've rethought this. UM. I would like to offer myself up to HBO basically free. I will work for them for the next four years. I'll do any television movie they want. But I just don't think I want to be caught up and tied down in a television series. This is after you've seen

the pilot. After i'd see the pilot. I might not have seen the pilot yet. And I just sort of rethought my future and panicked, and eventually they producer ended up coming on the show. Who I did a movie with Miami Rhapsody. They said to me, Look, this is We'll tell you about this kind of home. HBO is a place where it doesn't feel good. After season one, we don't do season two. Don't worry about that. Just

let's try. They're not going to hold you hostage. I went to the set on the first day and I never looked back, and every day I got in the shower to go to work, I was I was gobsmacked by the idea that I didn't want to be anywhere else. There wasn't a day that I spent on that set

that I didn't want to be there. When I think of that show, because it was a lot of practical locations, and when you guys were on the streets a lot, you weren't on the stage much, and I always think of you like four chicks in a trailer changing your clothes and outside of you here. Yeah, but I loved it. I loved it. I loved the work. I love the people, I love the storytelling, I love the character I loved it. When did you know you guys had gotten them well?

I felt at the end of the first season, Um, we produced the whole first season without being on the air. We went on the air, I think while we were already into our second season shooting, and even though there wasn't a terribly large audience at that time, I just felt that the stories we were telling were successful. And I think it became really necessary for us as we started to face a second and possibly third season that it had to get You couldn't hang your hat on

being titillating. You couldn't hang your hat on, you know, Nor did we want to on the story of clothes and carrying the story that told. But rather she had to start revealing why she was floundering, why why was she a mess? And Michael just had some innate, sort of preternatural instinct about carry Bradshaw and how to tell her story. And he was here. I think Michael was you know, grew up with a lot of bun A sisters, a lot of important women in his life. He is

deeply curious about women's stories. He can write women. It doesn't really make any sense, although there have been some great, great screenwriters who have written I mean, we know them. But he just was very, very First of all, he loved Carrie Bradshaw. He loved telling her story and was as invested in it as I was. And I think that's why we were such great partners and producing partners, because we were both bitter enders. We will work until

we were bloody and bloody crossing the finish line. We cared about it being as perfect as possible. But he loved that girl and he loved those stories, and I think when you were that interested and curious about when you're a writer like that, it just makes the writing that much richer. So King's the head writer, and he's a guy with an eye and an ear toward women's stories. Was the writing staff a lot of women or was

it mostly women? The top of each season they would meet in a writing room Los Angeles, where a lot of them lived at Michael Patrick's you know, home base was when he wasn't you know, shooting our show, And every now and then a fellow would come along and he would sit in the writing room I think at the top, you know, and they're breaking story and just um kind of give a perspective that was important for people to be familiar with because there was such a

strong female sensibility, and a couple of scripts were written by men. We had one young man for a while, but they weren't as consistent year to year as as our women were. At what point the ten staff too very tiny relative for television, considered quite small. Yeah, you know, at some point the show becomes this huge hit, And at what point in the process did they start to turn to you and say, well, now you're a producer

now we're going to factor in your import. When I first met with Darren, he said to me, why don't you be a consulting producer on the show or consultant? And I said, you know, He said it would be good for you. You You could learn about television, You could learn about producing television. So I said, well, who would say no to an opportunity to learn? And so I was very devoted to that idea. And second season they

said do you want to start producing? And I did, and I I said yes if they continued to let me learn, And that sort of the understanding was that I kind of laid out, was that I would only contribute if and when I thought I had something valuable to say. Really, it was an opportunity for me to now sit be more part of the conversation and learn

about producing. And I just did and loved it, loved And one aspect of that that I comes to mind for me, is it in your career prior to this, number one on the call sheet is a guy and you're the girl. So Nick Cage approves you, and Bruce I was hired before Nick. What I mean, but for many times in your career, whether you're working with Tim and you're working with all these people you made movies,

or you made a lot of movies. You're the girl and now you're number one of the call sheet and you get to decide who the men are that are coming to the door. How did that work with you? You know? I mean you have like kind of um tastes and you react in ways that you didn't even

know you would. I would have, you know, feelings about certain names, and and Michael would have feelings and that was, you know, sometimes hard because he would write it, so he imagined things, and so I couldn't argue with what what he saw in his head. My problem was that I knew what I was going to have to do on screen with them, and I think there's something very interesting about that which is hard to explain to people.

But you and I can get into it now. So you know, when they've given you somebody to play opposite, and everybody wanted them but you because and what you know, I would allow it under dress when someone's holding me down and saying you have to trust me, you have to try me. I know you haven't seen this out of this person. I think he or she can do.

Trump is perfect for this part of your boyfriend. So what I think it's hard to explain to these people, right the Senate that believes in their choice, is that you know what they won't bring, and you know what you will then have to do is tell the story for two people on camera. And I think what's really really dangerous about that is you end up projecting onto the other person what you wish they were bringing into the scene. And what I think happens is you become

a bad actor. You overact. You try to create chemistry and romance and love, and you imbue the scene with everything, and you can't because when you feel it, even if you're not in love with this person. I've worked with countless actors who I'm not in love with them. I really mean it, but I love working with them and I can. I don't care what they look like, smell like, where they come from, who they are, how tall, how short, If they're smart and interesting and talented actors. I do not.

Talent is the greatest ephrodisiac. It's But then this is the weird part, right, This is the fork in the road, is that I don't need to I don't even care if I don't want to have sex with them. I'm using you have to play with them, some romance. You just want to feel some friction, some kind of or some love, sword player love, some capturing of something. I did street Car Name Desire with Amy Madigan, and Amy Madigan's a real antiochally flinty cow girl. You know, this

really kind of tough little girl. And I loved Amy every night. I was in love with her. And I've got to have that some feeling. It's just so wonderful to have that. And when you don't, it's it's a kind of hard work. What would you do? I would be you know, it would be very hard and earn your money that week. I guess, so, I mean, I don't I don't know. I think it would be hard, and it would be a different kind of hard work, Like I would work so hard on that show. I

worked hours. I would do a hundred and hundred and ten hour weeks. I didn't care this kind of hard work shows. It made me a bad actor because I would try to keep it alive and sort of yourself parties and I think it makes you over animated, surface e and fake and it's just awful and it would upset me and it would make me pouty. It's really bizarrely hard. My code word with him. I was doing the series. I'd say to them, I go, you decide if I didn't like the person. That's what I said.

They say to me, we were thinking of so and so. I take a long pause and I go, well you decide, so you decide meant? No, you decide, you decide meant I don't like that idea. Now, so you're number one of the call sheet. Now you're producing the show. What do you decide if anything in terms of the text, because the show did get glorified and it also got some criticism for what you're saying about single women and sex. Did you think about that? I mean I thought about

what I knew and heard about. I didn't read anything. I didn't really. We didn't talk about peripheral chatter. We just Michael and I had a kind of agreement, like a blackout. We just really The only things we ever spoke about, press wise was when we were first in Maureen Dowd's column and we thought, Wow, this show is familiar enough for her to talk to reference, for her to reference reference that this is, yeah, this is But

what about the content of the scripts. Did you say to them, I don't want to say that about women that always say about sex. You know what I was most concerned about, and what I was super vigilant of out and a super gatekeeper, was the choice of language after the table read. I would say, and I don't mean just you know, salty language. I was real watch talk about that, because I thought, you know, she has

an HBO. You could have gone blue. You could have and you know, it's really kind of easy, but you have to be kind of smaller than it's lazy. So and also Carrie was a writer. I wanted her to be thoughtful about the choice of words, but also I

wanted her to be smart. And even though she was a mess, and even though she made mistakes and even though she showed poor judgment, that didn't mean she couldn't use interesting language when she was trying to talk about feelings and her own feelings and sexual politics and the um the mess that is her relationships romantically, or how she fell short in her friendships. I wanted her choice of words to be as complicated as she was, and sometimes she got and that used to really freaking upset me,

and I would get very strident about it. I was a gatekeeper. I felt like I had this familym in my hands that someone said to me, your responsibility. And Sarah Jessica still feels responsible for the character she helped create. In two thousand thirteen, when a Sex in the City spinoff, The Carrie Diaries premiered, featuring a sixteen year old Carry, Parker admitted finding that odd. The show was canceled after two seasons. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to

Here's the thing. My guest today is Sarah Jessica Parker, who became a household name when she starred on HBO as a Sex in the City. Her character, advice columnist Carry Bradshaw, dated many different men over the run of the show, but it was her on again, off again relationship with Mr Big that fans could not get enough of. Have you got a smoke? I quit? Oh? We always used to share a cigarette together. We did a lot

of things that were bad for me together. Chris Note played Mr Big and he was a central figure in the show from the very first episode. I knew Chris and uh so we did this table read, and I knew after the table read I thought, Wow, this could be good, This carry big thing could be really good.

And my greatest concern was that I was going to appear like a twinkie, that he was so earthbound and so so masculine, so virile and um kind of truculent and force of nature that I was going to my voice would somehow go up, you know, two octaves higher, and um. But I loved the story. I said, Oh, this is good. The last you know, these last three

four lines of the script were perfect. And um. But he but he is a so so special and we'll get back to the girls in a second, or the women, I should say, But since we got on to Chris, you know, the thing that surprised me most about Chris was, um, how I would never have predicted that we would have become that close, that he and I would have become so reliant upon one another, that it would be my job to take care of him on more than you know, four or five six dozen occasions, that I was really

responsible for keeping him happy, that I could negotiate his worst moments and and bring him out of them. That that was that he was my charge in some way. I love a great fellow actor and always and wouldn't have wanted to see anybody else do it. Play it, um, and all these people we meet and you can have love with them, and Tony Hopkins I did a movie with them. I mean, I can't tell you, like every day I was around and I was like, oh my god, I want to enjoy every minute this. I mean, he's

I won't be doing this forever, you know. And it's funny because you just can't maintain those relationships. It's such a lesson to learn when you're first starting out and you're on a movie set and it's all done and everybody goes home, and you think, these are the people I'm going to know for the rest of my life, and you know, write long letters and longhand and and page after page of you know, the documentation of your day.

And I'm gonna get a house together on a lake friendships and yeah, the lake house would be nice and um. But the truth is someone said, if you leave and you stay in touch with one person from a job, that's like a miracle. You know, people just go on and um. So these relationships are are funny and very unusual, and therefore I think more special because they are this kind of um finite little and how we to pick

up where we left off. I'd be in an award show and I'd see someone go, oh, my god, Cynthia. You hug Cynthia, Kiss Cynthia. My daughter would say, when was the last time you saw I go, I don't know, three years ago. You got to just pick up right where you left on the gypsy kind of transient thing. I call them the girls because I once joke with Christen that the four of you were like the Beatles. Actually,

any quartet I compared to the Beatles. You all had distinct personalities and distinct idiosyncrasies, and even the imperfections were kind of perfect too, because we were all really different and and we had to figure it out and create friendships on screen, you know, kind of prematurely before it meant anything in our real lives. You know how you kind of go backwards. You know, there's a whole history that brought these women together, and we eventually caught up

with our characters. Basically, Um, we were together for ten eleven years telling these stories, and you know, by the end, the kind of feelings that we had for one another, We're like, what we were doing on screen. It was very weird and it took a long time to figure out who we are with one another. But I remember sitting in Morocco for the last movie. We all had trailers, but we preferred to share a hotel room, and I thought, Wow, this is um this is the best it could be.

Kim might be lying down for a minute, or Cynthia's lying down and I'm reading a book or eating some some eating something more likely than not, and we're all just in a room, completely comfortable, the very thing you hope for in romance. You're like, I just want to get to that time with this fellow where I can eat in front of him, or where I can just read a book and I don't I'm not worried about entertaining him or And that's where we were as women

and friends and fellow actors. And a lot had been written that was untrue and it has been painful for all of us, and we've been all through it. We had traveled to this other side together and without trying that hard, because you can't really try that hard in real relations, like you can't focus it that way, you can't be that result oriented because they're people, they're human. You know, what are you gonna do? You can't force it.

But I really thought at that moment, Wow, like if this is it, this is the best, this is and honest and when you get that honest wave, I mean it's I always tell people it's like that moment in West Side Story when he says to her at the dance, he says, you're not lying, are you? And she said, I have not yet learned to lie about such things. And it has to be those people. I have a

very strange metaphysical feeling about those. Like McCartney said to me about the Beatles, he said, everyone was pressuring them to hire the guy that was the best drummer in London. And the guy came and played a few tracks for them, and they didn't really like him very much. And Ringo Star was off fulfillming other commitments he had to other bands and he was associated with, and he came back to record with them, and the alsaid, it's got to be him or we're not doing it anymore. It has

to be us four now for you. Well, the fifth Beatle for you guys, was the designer who was um, well, there was a toss up, was it was it the city of New York or was it Pat Field? Well, the clothes were such a huge Yeah, the clothes were Was that presented to you up front that she was going to become this style master. Actually we brought her in after the pilot because she had designed um She had designed Miami Rapsody, a movie I shot with David

Frankel that he wrote and directed in Miami. We knew we were going to um rehire the costume designer, and he said Pat Field, and I was like, of course, it's Pat Field, of course. And I had loved working with her, like fallen in she had that Remember when I went to n y U. She had a very very idiosyncratic boutique on eighth and eighth Street which was still open, and I did had many meetings with her there.

And only later, well into this life of the series or even the movie, did did she have to leave that? It was the landlord worked her out after all those years, I think thirty some years. There was she with you all the seasons of the show, all the seasons and the movies. And at what point does it come to you? Do you become We're really kind of getting further and further untethered from the mother ship here of fashion, because

obviously wore a lot of very stylized clothing. Well she she would have always told the story the same way, no matter what, I think, the only difference being that in the very beginning, we couldn't get our hands on anything. Nobody wanted to give us a thing, nobody, And we had a teeny teeny teeny we talk about anemic. We had a tiny, tiny budget for the whole per episode. And so that's why I wore so many thrift clothes from thrift stops, and that was the only way to fulfill,

you know, something unique. So so she was very clever. Thrift stores by necessity, thrift stores by necessity. We went to some rental houses in Miami, in New York, she had apartment in Miami, she had resources in Miami, and frankly all over and we just pulled and pulled and pulled. And it was about I think towards the end of the second or even the beginning of third season, I can't remember which. Someone will correct me that it was Fandy that loaned us a baguette and that was like

the gateway. That was, you know, the floodwaters. Everything shifted. We were able to get our hands on pieces that could help us tell the story maybe a little bit more clearly. And so the woman who started the show that had a that wore a thrift store closed because you had a thrift store budget for the show. As soon as Sex in the City really starts to conquetize in the culture and Maureene Downlalls, do you have people coming to you going, we're gonna do this and this

and this and this. How are we going to monetize or did all of it come to you slowly? I think the world was really different than so all of that didn't really exist in the same way. I wanted to do a fragrance, and that was that. That was mine. I long dreamed of doing a fragrance for lots of reasons. I won't barro your listeners with so I actually eventually had the courage to to say this to somebody. But this was in the days before actors were doing it.

There was one. There was the great Elizabeth Taylor signature fragrance white Diamonds, and really wasn't And Jennifer Lopez had very been really smart about business and fragrance business in particular, but all of that stuff, anything that came to me because of the show. I was super vigilant about not doing what was easy just because it was lucrative. I mean, that's always a great challenge. What is the real connection

to it? And I would have had them name a doughnut after me, a Duncan Donuts if they would have written me a seven figure I'm not like you. You have a lot of integrity and sex, and that carry Bradshaw is this iconic figure me. I would have let them name like a tie with whales on it after me at Brooks Brothers. Well, that would have been actually really cute. Okay, Okay, that's a word for it. The connection that isn't so ridiculous. Actually, I was ready to

cash in. I was ready, let's let's have a Jack Donneghee. I was a right okay, But but you have to remember forty Rock came after third. But the time thirty Rock was on the air, and the time you're talking about people presenting you with crazy opportunities, the world had shifted. When Garnier came to me Tina's now that spokes first and four and said to me, we want you to

do hair care commercials. I was like and and actually, this actor who I adored and admired and thought like hung the Moon and I will not say his name, Sad just said to me, well, you know, you're being really smart. At least you're not doing hair care commercials. And then they came to me with this crazy offer and I said no immediately no, because this actor I admired said to me, well, at least you're not well version an American version of Colin Firth. Let's put it

that way. And then I said to Kenny Lonergan, who's my husband's best friend, I said, you know this an ex actor said no, said are you idiots? Are you? And I was like, is it too late to collect? I not, wasn't practiced that. Do you actually pick up the phone and say I've been thinking? So I called Richard love It and I said, like, I've made this. I think this grave error and he said, oh it was interesting. Is it interesting how you go from talking people out of hiring you to talking them back into

high You come full circle? Sarah Jessica Parker fill circle. Is you calling up the Fructis people saying I fructiased up here? Yeah? Exactly. Anyway, they were nice and um forgiving and in rest is history. But I want to talk to you about um. Is it kind of not ruined? But does it affect you? Does it? Because I think it does? It can't? Does it affect you in terms of um acting and actions? To be married to? Who you're married to, who's so talented and so polished and

so smart and so elegant? And do you sit there sometimes and go I always have an image of you, like lying in there with your husband. I have these very romantic Woody Allen movie images. You're in bed and you have a specially squeezed great to juice in the

times who squeezed it? And your son, of course, his parents are stars with the paper ironed, give me the newspapers by a butler, of course, by a butler named James Wilkie, James, that juice isn't gonna walk over here by itself, son, And you're in bed, and the sun brings you the trail to keep stock trotting, as they say, and he brings you the juice. And you're sitting there and your husband and you were just giving each other notes about scripts, and don't you don't want to work

with him? Who do they want you to work with? No? No, no, no, you really can. I mean, I'm so flatter, do you you? I actually picture that in other people's lives, and perhaps even yours, but including yours, would be a physical My wife was a yoga instructor. I'm sorry. Yeah, um no, I mean we don't have that kind of leisure time and no, none of that has ever happened, although I will say there was a time before we had children. Remember that where we would sleep? I mean, do you

remember not being in bed with us? But do you remember that time before you had children where you were I'm trying to envision being in bed with you? Go go go. You woke up like eleven, You're like, yeah, crack of twelve eleven and um. Then you would get the paper and you would sit with someone you liked or loved hopefully and you would read and you talk about coffee and put another log on the fire, go to cinema the village and watch a movie. Yeah, go

to you film forum, or go to Chinatown on Sunday's. Um, you know all of that. I'm so glad we did that, though, you know, as much as I'd think, wow, that was sometimes I miss it a lot. At least you did it.

You did it. One thing I always never ceased to amaze me was that in my single days, when I was married, got divorced, I was single for several years, and whenever I would date women, regardless of it, they had law degrees, they worked in biotech, whatever they were doing, we would talk about their television viewing and they would say, well, I don't watch television. I don't really have time for television. I mean, I think you can disconnecting my cable. Well,

I watched sex in the cinema. That story telling, that's the writing, that's the stories we got to tell. We were just the repository. We were the lucky enough you never want to do a series again? Um, I used to say never. Now I think would they let me do six or eight episodes? Then I could do it. It's just hard with the kids right now in school

and we need to be there for the kids. I have two five year olds and a twelve year old, And um, if I could do it the way I like to do things, which is splitting the atoms the bitter ender and still be a good parent and wife, yeah, I think I would. You know, it's just about timing and choices now that I have kids, that's the thing. But it's you know, Extrasberg says in the Girlfriend, this is the life that we've chosen. Yeah, it's a dream, really,

Sarah Jessica Parker is living her dream again. She said she was on the beach with her family just the day before. The tide was way out. You know, so the if you're a small child, there's just no sense of danger and the ocean is no longer this formidable, awful thing. But your friend and we were on the beach building what we call drippy castles. The feeling was close to those Sunday mornings lazing in bed over coffee, but the circumstances were very different. Sarah Jessica seemed to

think it was a consequence of getting older. Maybe it's finally time for another spinoff, one about an older wiser, Carrie Bradshaw, who navigates the complexities of motherhood than marriage. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing