Viewers can't get enough of "And Just Like That…" But is your "Sex and the City" knowledge up to
scratch? Have you heard the rumors about Kim Cattrall? And do you know what color
Carrie's hair was meant to be? Here is the complete untold truth of "Sex and the City."
Fashion played a huge role in "Sex and the City," and shoes were an essential
part of that. As the character Carrie Bradshaw once realized,
"I spent $40,000 on shoes, and I have no place to live!"
While we all loved seeing Carrie clatter around New York in her seemingly endless collection
of expensive footwear, it turns out that it wasn't always fun for Sarah Jessica Parker.
In 2013, the actress revealed that the heels took a toll on her feet, as she confessed to The Edit,
"I literally ran in heels [...] I worked 18-hour days and never took them off."
Apparently, she discovered years later that Carrie's heels had actually done some
permanent damage. When she hurt her ankle filming "I Don't Know How She Does It,"
she went to a foot doctor. As Parker recalled,
"He said, 'Your foot does things it shouldn't be able to do.'"
According to Parker, the bones in her feet had actually moved around
and were in the wrong places. Basically, the star paid a big price for playing Carrie Bradshaw.
"I have no fortune. I didn't need a cookie to tell me that."
Darren Star created "Sex and the City," but by the end of the series, he was no longer
involved in developing the show's plot lines or scripts. As he revealed to Kindle Singles,
"If you're empowering other people to write and produce your show,
at a certain point, you've got to let them follow their vision."
As a reminder, in the final episodes of the series, Carrie ended up in a
happily-ever-after scenario with Mr. Big, which made for one of the most romantic TV scenes.
"Carrie, you're the one."
However, Star wasn't pleased, and told Kindle Singles,
"I think the show ultimately betrayed what it was about,
which was that women don't ultimately find happiness from marriage."
Even though Star was disappointed with the romantic ending,
Sarah Jessica Parker disagreed and told Yahoo Style,
"As I recall, the way Carrie and Big married was something she wanted."
It's hard to imagine "Sex and the City" without Sarah Jessica Parker at the helm
as Carrie Bradshaw. However, it turns out, we almost got a very different leading lady.
In 2016, the actress confessed on an edition of "The Jess Cagle Interview" for People that
she was very hesitant about taking on the role after the pilot was picked up. Parker recalled,
"I met my agents in L.A. [...] and I was like, 'Do you think maybe I could not do this now?'"
At the time, she had gotten into a routine of doing plays and films.
Parker knew that "Sex and the City" would take up most of her time instead, something she referred
to as being held "hostage." However, Parker's mind was changed when the network explained,
"No, no, no. We don't function like that. We want you here if you want to be here."
Thank goodness Parker was convinced to continue in her role,
as it's hard to picture the show without her.
With more than 20 years now separating us and the original release of "Sex and the City," it comes
as no surprise to learn that the show is slightly dated. One of the most noticeable things about
the show today is that it presents an extremely white cast of characters. However, it turns out
that the cast wasn't comfortable with this lack of diversity. When a Black actor was finally cast
as a recurring romantic lead in 2003, Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda, revealed to CBS News,
"We all of us, and no one more than Sarah Jessica, had lobbied for this for a long, long time."
She went on to explain that initially creators Darren Star and Candace Bushnell had written
the show to reflect the circles they moved in, which were largely white.
But for Nixon, this wasn't a good enough excuse, as she told CBS News,
"It is six years later now, and I think it's irresponsible."
In the 2008 "Sex and the City" movie, Sarah Jessica Parker's character, Carrie, is seen
leafing through a book called "Love Letters of Great Men" while sitting in bed with Mr.
Big. Apparently, fans of the film headed to their local bookshops to purchase a copy of the book,
only to find that it didn't exist. CBS News even published an article about the
sudden demand for the made-up book. In fact, AbeBooks.com revealed to the Associated Press
that they had received hundreds of queries about the book after the movie's release.
British publisher Macmillan eventually caught on to the surge in demand and published a book
with the same name. The volume contained the love letters of Henry VIII, Mozart, and Oscar Wilde.
It's pretty cool that "Sex and the City" inspired its fans to read,
even if the real version of the book had to be created after the film's release.
"There they were, the love letters of great men, volume one."
As many "Sex and the City" fans may already know,
the show got its name from a New York Observer column of the same name that was written by the
show's co-creator Candace Bushnell. As Bushnell explained in a piece for The Hollywood Reporter,
the column was pretty much all her idea. Peter Kaplan, who was then the editor-in-chief of
the publication, let Bushnell decide what she wanted to write about. The writer said,
"I think it should be about me and my friends, who are all single and crazy."
Kaplan then came up with the now-famous title, "Sex and the City," and the rest
is history. The book "Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think,
Live, and Love" explained that Carrie was really Bushnell's alter-ego,
a name created so that the author's parents wouldn't find out about her sexual escapades.
In the columns, Bushnell wrote about Carrie as her "friend," but all of the
stories were actually from her own life. It turns out she even had her own Mr. Big.
These days, it's impossible to imagine Carrie Bradshaw without her big,
bouncy blonde locks. However, it turns out that the character was originally
imagined as a brunette in the first pilot script.
While looks shouldn't matter, having a darker hair color definitely would have changed Carrie.
According to BuzzFeed, the producers decided to make Carrie a blonde character just 24
hours before shooting the pilot. Apparently, they changed their minds because they wanted Carrie to
resemble Candace Bushnell, the original "Sex and the City" writer. In fact, in the pilot episode
of "Sex and the City," you can see that Carrie's hair hadn't even gone fully blonde at that point.
While the original premise of "Sex and the City" was based on Candace Bushnell's New
York Observer column, most of the plot lines came from other sources. It turns out, however,
that none of the story lines were entirely made up. In an IMDb interview, Cynthia Nixon revealed
that the writers of the show always drew their stories from real life. The actress explained,
"They had a rule in the writing that they couldn't put anything in an episode that
didn't literally happen to someone in the writer's room or someone they knew."
One of the show's writers explained how things
worked in the writer's room in a piece for Cosmopolitan, saying
"We were all dating so we would go out at night
and come in the next morning and have some crazy story."
Apparently, a lot of the stories were seriously shocking.
There's no denying that "Sex and the City" is filled with some pretty scandalous sexual
storylines. For actress Kristin Davis, who played Charlotte, this meant that telling
certain family members about her role was a little awkward. As she told The Guardian,
she asked her parents not to watch a few scenes, and her parents hid the
show from Davis' grandmother, in case the sexual content was too upsetting for her.
However, Davis' parents apparently grew to love watching the show.
Her father, a college teacher, even used it for his class on "Marriage and Sexuality." However,
Davis admitted her mother wasn't a huge fan of Samantha's sexual escapades on the show.
We all remember that episode of "Sex and the City" when Carrie and Miranda grabbed cupcakes
in the West Village at Magnolia Bakery. As a local New Yorker wrote in The Telegraph,
"Not long after the episode was broadcast, the tourists started to arrive and the bakery started
charging them if they wanted to take photographs of Carrie and company's favorite haunt."
She went on to describe how, even after the show ended, the tourists kept on coming,
leaving "half-eaten cupcakes" in the garbage can outside her house.
Eventually, the bakery even hired security staff.
It's safe to say that "Sex and the City" would be totally different without Kim Cattrall as
Samantha, the most sexually liberated of the four women. However, as it turns out, Cattrall
wasn't initially too keen on the show. On an episode of "Life Stories," the actress revealed,
"I think I was scared. I think that at 41, I didn't know if I could pull it off."
Apparently, she was terrified that the ageism in Hollywood would paint
her as an older woman who was preying on younger men. She reportedly turned down the
role three times before the production team finally convinced her to sign on.
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda."
Keeping Carrie's clothes
For many of us, the idea of having just one outfit from "Sex and the City" is a total dream come
true. The show was filled with wild clothing items and some truly inspirational outfits.
At New York's Vulture Festival, Sarah Jessica Parker revealed that she actually
got to keep around 95% of what she wore on the show. Parker explained,
"I don't touch it or wear it, but all of that is really meaningful."
After six seasons and two films, the world of "Sex and the City" returned in 2021 with a brand new
show starring many members of the original cast. According to showrunner Michael Patrick King,
showcasing the sex lives of 50-year-old women was somewhat revolutionary. As he told Vogue,
"There were a lot of positive reactions, but one [...] response online was people
sharing pictures of the Golden Girls. And I was like, 'Wow, so it's either you're 35,
or you're retired and living in Florida. There's a missing chapter here.'"
"Why are you insulting me?” “It's a defense mechanism."
The reboot was also a chance to bring people some much-needed nostalgia.
As actress Sarah Jessica Parker explained, the show was like comfort food for fans,
which made it perfect for a world in the midst of a pandemic. She explained,
"We spoke about what we were missing in the pandemic:
joy, community, the experience of being together [...] The world of Carrie and her
friends has always been about coming home, and I felt like we needed that right now."
While "And Just Like That..." sees plenty of familiar faces returning,
there is one very significant omission, and that's Kim Cattrall.
Cattrall said goodbye to the world of "Sex and the City" for good in 2017,
when she turned down the option to star in a third film. Her decision caused a huge reaction online,
but Cattrall stuck by her decision. As she revealed on "Life Stories,"
"I feel that the show is the best when it was the series and the bonus was the two movies."
The tabloids spread the story that Cattrall had opted out of the reboot because of a feud with
her fellow castmates. However, in 2017, as Cattrall explained on "Life Stories,"
"This is about a clear decision, an empowered decision in my life,
to end one chapter and start another. I'm 61. It's now."
"And the answer was simply thank you, but no."
It seems she felt the same way when approached about the 2021 reboot.
However, some people are still holding out hope that Cattrall will find her
way back to the series eventually. As a source told the Daily Mail in 2021,
"We all miss Kim and we hope she comes back for the second season [of 'And Just Like
That…'] — the door will never close on her, she is an important part of the franchise."
And just like that, we got our hopes up for seeing the Fab Four back together again one day.
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