After more than 25 years of playing Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker has learned to tune out the critics of her complicated character.
The 6x Golden Globe winner recently defended the And Just Like That… sex columnist role as she called out the double standard of messy female characters being “so condemned,” while it’s allowed for men.
“I think, fundamentally, Carrie is an extraordinarily decent and good person – an extremely devoted friend, she’s generous of spirit and time, in all she has to offer,” she told Huffpost about the role she originated on HBO‘s Sex and the City (1998-2004).
Although she admitted Carrie has “made mistakes” and “not been mature in love,” Parker reasoned, “It’s always interesting to me that [this is] so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him. And if a woman has an affair, or behaves poorly, or spends money foolishly […] there’s a kind of punitive response to it.”
Parker added, “But I ultimately think that all those feelings are pretty fantastic. That kind of connection and those kinds of strong feelings, both positive and negative, are pretty wonderful. People are kind of captive in those moments to something, and I think that’s perfectly fine. I just think, it’s just interesting, the ways in which we judge women, and not men.”
Based on Candace Bushnell’s New York Observer column, Sex and the City ran for six seasons on HBO from 1998 to 2004, followed by two theatrically-released feature films in 2008 and 2010, as well as the CW prequel series The Carrie Diaries (2013-’14). The sequel series And Just Like That… debuted on HBO Max in 2021, currently in its third season.
