New York Magazine has a massive piece up about Sarah Jessica Parker and how she became synonymous with New York City, where she talks about everything from just how great it is to be married to Matthew Broderick (even though he blames Parker every time he sees an exposed thong over low-slung jeans) to her serious qualms about turning herself into a brand. An interesting nugget revealed is that the original script ideas had the ladies going on separate road trip adventures, rather than schlepping around Manhattan as per usual.
Parker and her collaborator, writer-director Michael Patrick King, were kicking around a movie concept. King’s original pitch sounds like a palate cleanser intended to follow the hype surrounding the series finale—it was a light, summery, Bob Hope–style road movie, with the girls following separate paths. “Then the deals weren’t happening,” King tells me. “And the money people didn’t believe in it.”
Parker’s co-star Kim Cattrall reportedly scuttled the project, wanting more money and creative control. “If I had thought it was any of my business at the time,” Parker tells me carefully, “what I would have said is, ‘Isn’t it okay for Kim to think that the money wasn’t right?’” (She also drily notes, “Perhaps she was some kind of emotional psychic, because this way we made a better movie.”)
There's also an interesting bit where she explains just how awful the paparazzi, who even go to her son's school and push children around to get pictures, can make a person feel about themselves and what they've done to deserve them.
This idea that children are fair game has appeared “over the last four years, even more so the last 24 months,” she says. “Now we just kind of eat it. It’s like empty calories. It’s shit. And it’s so base.” Earlier, she’d told me, “I feel very ashamed, I feel like I’m like a—the town trollop. It makes me feel ashamed of my work. And I’m not. But I’m attached to this culture now in a way that, it’s kind of vulgar. And I feel cheapened. And I feel like I’m cheapening the school, like I’m bringing dirt, like I’m bad for the neighborhood.”
As far as movie spoilers go, this is what she had to say about what happens in the film:
When the story begins, Carrie and Big have been together for ten years, and the melodrama of their off-and-on dynamic has faded. “She would probably long for that earlier type of heartbreak versus what she experiences this time around,” Parker says, dishing cryptic tidbits that are sure to be ruined when the movie gets spoiled online. “The disappointment and the loss is so painful because they’re grown-ups now, and it just changes, as we all know.”
Make of that what you will. Maybe Big gets hit by a bus with Carrie Bradshaw's face on it.
Watch the full Sex and the City trailer.
Watch an interview with Cynthia Nixon about the film.
Watch the first Sex and the City teaser.
Check out the trailer for State and Main, a David Mamet comedy where Parker parodies her own reluctance to get naked on camera.
