Sarah Jessica Parker Didn’t Think She’d End Up on TV Again After ‘Sex and the City’
Sarah Jessica Parker became bigger than even some movie stars after years on the iconic series Sex and the City. But after the HBO franchise ended, Parker assumed her stint doing TV would end as well.
Why Sarah Jessica Parker thought she’d left TV for good
Parker might’ve had her fill of doing TV shows after Sex and the City. The show lasted six years, from 1998 to 2004. It could’ve lasted even longer if Parker hadn’t decided to end the show on a high. When asked what she planned on doing after Sex and the City in an interview with Oprah, she didn’t see herself jumping on another show.
“So much of my life lately has been Sex and the City, and now I want more. I want to be a better parent, a better actress — to keep myself challenged and terrified. And I want to read books and have conversations with my friends about plays we’ve seen. I want to mess up a million recipes at home, like I used to,” Parker said.
Without the long-running series on her schedule, Parker also felt optimistic about balancing out her personal life and her career more.
“My world feels so compartmentalized now: There’s work, and then there’s rushing home to see the baby and put him to bed. It’s like, ‘Remember me? I’m the one who loves you.’ Once he’s asleep, I run upstairs to answer phone calls and sort mail. After Sex and the City is finished, I might do a couple of movies a year, and I’ll have time to see friends. We’ll go on vacations again,” she said.
Eventually, however, Parker couldn’t resist telling stories through television.
“When I finished Sex and the City and then the movies, I assumed I wouldn’t do television for a while because of how you characterized it,” Parker said in an interview with Variety. “And I really love the medium. … I like the idea of living an alternate life to your own and telling a complete story about somebody. I love that television demands a sort of discipline. When you’re producing, and I’m sort of bundling producing in with the acting — because, for me, that is a part of the enormous joy and challenge and tears — I love how specific you have to be about every decision and how it all adds up so quickly.”
The television show that made Sarah Jessica Parker return to TV
It seemed Parker did exactly what she said she’d do for a few years. After Sex and the City, she had a few bit parts in shows like Project Runway and Glee. But she spent the majority of her time acting on the big screen. This changed when Parker decided to do the television show Divorce. As the title implies, the show was about a middle-aged divorced couple on the verge of separating for good. Parker was initially supposed to produce the show, but the concept was so intriguing that she couldn’t help but star in it.
It also helped that Divorce would be shot in New York, keeping Parker close to her family.
“I had all these other people in mind that I wanted to play the part. But then when it was presented, I was like yeah, I love this woman. She’s so unfamiliar. And I was so excited. I got the blessings of my family and my husband and I knew what it would require. Being able to shoot in New York allows me to get to make a choice, period,” she said.
Divorce lasted for three seasons, from 2016 to 2019. But Parker’s comeback to television would last even longer. Fans welcomed Parker back as Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City revival series And Just Like That. The show already has two successful seasons so far, and will be airing a third on Max.
