Sarah Jessica Parker Once Felt ‘Sex and the City 2’ Was the Antidote for the First Film
Sex and the City expanded its audience and its story with its 2008 feature named after the series. But the film’s star, Sarah Jessica Parker, felt the second movie had an element to it that the first lacked.
Sarah Jessica Parker opened up about her feelings towards ‘Sex and the City 2’
The first Sex and the City feature was such a success that it spawned a second highly profitable movie. But Sex and the City 2 was very different from the first film. The movie would follow the girls halfway across the world in Abu Dhabi, away from their familiar playground in New York City. The film’s director Michael Patrick King, who also produced the show, intentionally did so to separate it from the first feature.
“My inspiration for this movie was the audience at the first movie,” King once told Collider. “When I would see the audience showing up dressed and having cocktails before, in groups, going out, and I saw people taking pictures of themselves in the theater seats I thought, ‘This is an interactive party. This is no longer a movie.’”
Parker also felt that Sex and the City 2 was a much more fun experience than the first movie because of its tone.
“The film is sort of the antidote to the first one, which had a lot of sadness in it,” Parker once told Daily Mail. “It was really a grown-up tale. This movie is more like a caper, a romp. It’s fun and big and cinematic and all the girls [she and co-stars Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall] are together a lot more.”
Sarah Jessica Parker worked closer with her cast than ever before in ‘Sex and the City 2’
Sex and the City 2 also brought Parker closer to her cast than she’d ever been. Because they were filming in another far away country, Parker revealed that she and the cast couldn’t film and go home like they were accustomed to. The four actors had to live together and were more involved in each other’s lives. And Parker was grateful for the experience.
“I came away loving them more than I ever have because I got to see them in a new way. I was so reliant on them and they became ever more necessary,” she said.
Parker added that she admired her team’s work ethic. Being so far away from their families and familiar surroundings didn’t slow their production down one bit. This only inspired Parker to work just as hard.
“I was so challenged by the work they were doing and how good they were,” she said. “They were such thoroughbreds. Nothing could get us down, no matter how hungry we were or how much we had to go to the bathroom on hour 18 of day 58…looking around the crew and the people we brought and we could see in their eyes this was the day they were missing their kids, but they were sticking it out with us. It was incredibly impressive and inspiring and it felt very buoyant on tough days.”
Sarah Jessica Parker agreed that ‘Sex and the City 2’ missed the mark
Sex and the City 2 managed to make some decent money when it hit theaters. It earned $294.7 million at the box-office on a modest budget. However, it wasn’t as successful critically or financially as its predecessor. The first movie earned $418 million on an even lesser budget than its sequel. Fans of the series also considered the movie truer to the series than its sequel.
“I understand, I actually get it,” Parker once said according to Vanity Fair. “I can see where we fell short on that movie, and I’m perfectly happy to say that publicly.”
Although there were murmurs of a Sex and the City 3, it was decided a revival series would work better instead at some point.
