Sarah Jessica Parker knows that her “Sex and the City” and “And Just Like That” heroine Carrie Bradshaw isn’t always easy to like – but she doesn’t really want to hear about it.
Sitting with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ “Las Culturistas” podcast on Wednesday, the longtime executive producer and star said she knows the feverish fan takes exist about Carrie’s at-times questionable behavior, adding that while she tries to stay ignorant to them, one co-star keeps her in the loop, for better or worse.
“I’m not privy to all of the chatter so I’m just — Kristin Davis always keeps me posted in ways that sometimes I’m like, ‘You don’t have to tell me that! I don’t want to hear what anyone has to say,’” Parker said when talking through Carrie’s missteps. “Plus it doesn’t help me. But I’m thrilled that people have feelings! Like, how great.”
Asked if she judges Carrie for cheating on Aidan in the original HBO comedy series, for instance, Bradshaw quipped: “Like men have been doing forever, as leads on shows and in movies and people are like, ‘I love him!’”
“I mean, she’s a fictional character. I think people make mistakes and smart people do stupid things and they use poor judgment and they fall really short often. The best of us fall short,” she said.
When Rogers accused Chris Noth’s notorious “Big” character – who Carrie eventually marries in the multi-series and two-film franchise – of “narcissistic abuse,” Parker admitted that “those are new words for me,” but “if Carrie Bradshaw were somebody who was absolutely reliable to resist in that instance the temptation of Big … then I’m not entirely sure — what is the show?”
“Who is this person if she is only making really solid, predictable choices?” Parker questioned, adding that the show is “not a recipe for all of us to live by. That’s what makes it. It’s like there’s an altered state to ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s not entirely, the emotional life is rooted in truth, but its existence has always felt to me like slightly technicolor, slightly altered. Like, the city looks like this, and the clothes look like this. There’s a time warp, like, time suspends and you can be with people you love for long periods of time, which does not exist for all of us, no matter how much we love our friends. And love has this sort of, like, extra dose of some kind of adrenaline-fueled … You don’t spend time on HBO being perfect.”
Parker then cited one of her “favorite characters in the world” who was on the prestige cable network at the same time as Carrie during “Sex and the City’s” original run: Tony Soprano of “The Sopranos.”
“That is not a man who made great choices. But it’s curious how many people did not interrogate those same things about him, nor should they have because it was just beautiful writing and it brought us into the life of someone we wouldn’t normally feel such compassion for,” Parker reflected. “So I’m not comparing, I’m just saying it’s curious how little tolerance we have for a woman falling short, let’s just say.”
It’s not the first time during Parker’s Season 3 press run for “And Just Like That” that she’s defended Carrie from fans who might question her life choices. On a June episode of Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, she applauded the writing of the character for stirring such division in the fanbase.
“I admired that she was scrappy,” she said of Carrie. “She was a little survivor. She had instincts to keep her head [up], not always making smart choices and falling short of being the best friend or the best girlfriend or her best self, but I also was very happy that they were writing her that way.”
“And Just Like That” Season 3 is currently streaming on HBO Max. “Las Culturistas” is an iHeartPodcast and Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network production.
