Sarah Jessica Parker on Carrie, Aidan, Big, Big Hats, Motherhood, Success, and That Video She Posted of the Eclipse 8 Years Ago
It's a hot, stuffy day in Paris's Champs-Élysées district. Guys on mopeds are whizzing around the backstreets like dragonflies. Couples are sharing midday cigarettes and thick espressos across metal tables outside Le Café de Paris. Everything is busy, rambunctious, fizzing with energy. And if you were to walk into one of the city's most famous hotels, up the red carpeted floor and into one of its many rooms and alcoves, you'd find Sarah Jessica Parker—of And Just Like That… and Sex and the City fame—in a funereal lace gown, perfectly waved hair, and scarlet peep-toe heels, mascaraed eyes blinking expectantly.
Press junkets are never easy—actors are often sat on stools in windowless rooms beneath glaring lights for hours at a time, usually jet-lagged and disorientated while people wearing headphones march in and out with clipboards. But Parker is, obviously, a seasoned pro. Candid and sincere in person—there are fewer of the wry one-liners we've come to expect of Carrie Bradshaw, and even the way she sits is different—the 60-year-old actress greets me as if we're at a dinner table. 'Would you like some water?' she asks, 'Are you going to get thirsty?' She regularly turns the line of questioning back around, pushing against the usual set-up. 'Do your friends turn their phone off at a dinner table?' she asks, at one point. And later, 'Do you share your closet with a partner?' In other words: she's friendly, she's curious.
Parker herself needs no introduction. Though the actress has appeared in a number of films over the past few decades, it's her role as Carrie Bradshaw that she remains most synonymous with. Most women, and some men, who are currently alive were raised on Sex and the City's six seasons—regardless of their generation—with Bradshaw's sardonic and sometimes neurotic narration so deeply familiar that it's hard to imagine a world in which she wasn't embedded within the collective psyche ('And I couldn't help but wonder…'). Now, many of those same fans have transferred their attention to And Just Like That…, its similar if slightly more absurd and soapy sequel spin-off, which thankfully contains just as many prime fashion moments and timely conversation starters.
And so, with And Just Like That… Season 3 on our screens until mid-August, we caught up with Parker to chat favorite fashion moments, generational divides, and why nobody should achieve 'massive success' at 22 years old.
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