The fight for 'Sex'
BostonHerald.com: For actress/fashionista Sarah Jessica Parker, playing Carrie Bradshaw on HBO’s “Sex and the City” was more than just a television role.
“It’s been, now, almost 11 years of my life. I don’t know how one can sum it up,” Parker said.
The 43-year-old actress and her husband, actor Matthew Broderick, have a 5-year-old son, James Wilkie. Parker called Carrie “a life-changing experience. Personally it’s not the same as having a child, it’s a very different experience. But certainly it’s enriched my life in ways that I could have never imagined.”
The movie version of the long-running HBO series opens Friday. As both producer and star, the two years she spent getting “Sex” made “seems nothing short of miraculous. This is the movie that Michael Patrick (King, the film’s screenwriter and director) and I hoped for, fought for, dreamt of, battled for, doggedly pursued.”
The struggle began with the search for a studio once HBO passed on a movie. Parker credits the fans for sparking New Line to pony up.
“To make a movie about four women over 40 is really not the way that Hollywood likes to spend their money. It’s really the commitment and the energy of the audience, through DVDs and syndication,” she said. “Had they not have been so devout, we could not have convinced a studio.”
Unlike the first season of “Sex,” when outrageousness was the order of the day, the movie charts a different time for Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.
“All the Botox in the world isn’t going to change time. There is too much documentation. To run from it, to have a story about four women running around Manhattan, drinking liberally and looking for sexual conquests, is just not the story we want to tell,” Parker said.
That’s why “Dreamgirls” Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson appears as Carrie’s assistant. “She illustrates the difference between being 20 and coming to New York with all that hope of promise and the more silly things, fashion, socializing. All that stuff that a 20-year-old should be exploring.”
Is this the end for Carrie?
“I just don’t feel like that is a decision that’s mine to make. It’s greedy right now to think about anything beyond this experience.”
