Sarah Jessica Parker Says ‘Sex And The City’ Looks ‘Tone-Deaf’ Two Decades Later
Sarah Jessica Parker has put the final nail in the coffin for Sex and the City as fans knew it. The actress, who starred as Carrie Bradshaw on the HBO hit from 1998 to 2004, has admitted that the groundbreaking show looks “tone-deaf” 20 years later. While talking to reporters at the Deauville Film Festival, Parker pointed to the original series’ “lack of diversity” as she acknowledged that the show as it once appeared would never work today.
“You couldn’t make it today because of the lack of diversity on screen,” Parker said, per the Hollywood Reporter. “I personally think it would feel bizarre.”
Sarah Jessica Parker’s comments come less than one year after she had been holding out hope for a third Sex and the City movie. Now that plans for a third flick have been scrapped, the star shut down the idea of rebooting the series with a new cast.
“I don’t know that you could do it with a different cast. I think that’s radical and interesting, but you can’t pretend it’s the same. It wouldn’t be a reboot as I understand it. If you came back and did six episodes, you’d have to acknowledge the city is not hospitable to those same ideas. You’d look like you were generationally removed from reality.”
Parker went on to say it would be “certainly interesting to see four diverse women experiencing NYC their way. … It would be interesting and very worthwhile exploring, but it couldn’t be the same.”
Here's how Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall landed their iconic roles on #SexAndTheCity: https://t.co/MrzuE1OWpX pic.twitter.com/bVo9ad9BWR
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) May 14, 2018
Sarah Jessica Parker starred in the TV version of Sex and the City alongside Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon for six seasons, and the foursome went on to reprise their roles as Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda in the big screen movies Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010). Plans for a third movie fell apart last year, but Parker made it clear that the demise of the Sex and the City franchise was not her idea and she expressed her disappointment in not finishing out the foursome’s final chapter.
“It’s over,” Parker told Extra of Sex and the City 3. “I’m disappointed. We had this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, joyful, very relatable script and story. It’s not just disappointing that we don’t get to tell the story and have that experience, but more so for that audience that has been so vocal in wanting another movie.”
Parker had been a vocal champion for the third movie written by SATC scribe Michael Patrick King, telling the Los Angeles Times she believed the series had “one more story to tell.”
The story was officially over for the original foursome after series star Kim Cattrall announced she had no interest in doing a third Sex and the City movie. But with Sarah Jessica Parker’s comments, it’s pretty clear that Sex and the City as fans knew it will never be back—not even with a recast Samantha.
