Sex and the City About the Movie
Strap on your Manolos and grab a cupcake and a Cosmopolitan. Those four fabulous New Yorkers – Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte – are back and coming to the big screen in the feature film Sex and the City, based on one of the most talked about series of all time.
The series Sex and the City debuted in 1998 on HBO and ran for six illustrious seasons before the finale in 2004. The Sex and the City series earned 50 Emmy nominations during its run, winning seven, including acting nods for Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon. The series also won 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series and was nominated for 24 Golden Globes, winning eight, including Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and acting awards for Parker and Kim Cattrall.
But before it hit the small screen, Sex and the City was a series of autobiographical newspaper columns in The New York Observer by author Candace Bushnell. Darren Star, the creator and executive producer of such iconic television shows as “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place,” saw immediate potential in Bushnell’s writings about sexual politics among New York’s social set. “I read those articles and I thought, ‘wow, this is a great window into New York,’” Star recalls. “I just loved the character of a single woman who is writing about herself and exploring the city and the nature of relationships at the same time.” Bushnell later compiled her columns into a book, which became a bestseller when it was published in 1996.
With the start of the Sex and the City series, Star also asked Michael Patrick King, the man who would go on to executive produce the series as well as eventually write and direct the feature film, to join the series as a writer and as co-executive producer. “Darren knew that Michael brought something that was very unique in terms of his skills as a writer,” says Sarah Jessica Parker, who returns in the role of Carrie and also serves as a producer on the film. “That was just our good fortune and Darren’s smarts.”
In writing for the Sex and the City series, King concentrated on developing the characters of the four women. He offers, “Miranda’s the sarcastic, sort of angry, one. Charlotte’s the sweeter, sort of preppy one, the more traditional one. Samantha’s the sexy, sort of power-hungry one. And then, there’s Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the indefinable one. From there, everything grew. You figure out their sense of humor, on and off screen. And then each year of the series we became more and more connected, like a relationship, as the girls grew and the relationships between the actresses and the writers and directors grew.”
Once the Sex and the City series began to air on HBO, audiences fell in love with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, and discussions about the previous night’s episode became regular water cooler talk all over America.
“It was not at all what any of us expected,” says Kristin Davis, who reprises the role of Charlotte. “You never expect something to be as successful and go for as long as we got to go. We had just a really incredible time.”
“The success of the show stemmed from a lot of things,” adds Cynthia Nixon, who again plays Miranda. “It starts with the writing. It’s really clever and heartfelt writing. People watch the Sex and the City show over and over, the same episode five, ten times because it’s so jam-packed full of content. Not just jokes – ideas. And I think the actors are wonderful.”
“It was about women joining together as the new family, girlfriends sticking together through thick and thin” adds Kim Cattrall, who returns as Samantha. “And those relationships are what made the show so popular.”
“The show was successful because there was a void that needed to be filled,” adds Michael Patrick King. “And that was, someone had to speak out for single women, someone going through life alone in a society that says everybody should be together.
