‘Sex and the City’: Sarah Jessica Parker Recalls Her #MeToo Experience With a Co-Star
Sarah Jessica Parker experienced some tense moments on the set of Sex and the City — and no, we’re not talking about her infamous feud with Kim Cattrall.
We’re talking about an issue she had with an unnamed male co-star. In a new interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, Parker, 54, said the actor “was behaving, not only inappropriately, but perhaps [wasn’t] living up to contractual obligations as well.”
She said the experience made her feel uncomfortable
The Divorce actor told NPR that she didn’t feel comfortable speaking up on set about the co-star, who she described as a “very big movie star.”
“I think no matter how evolved or how modern I thought I was … I didn’t feel entirely in a position — no matter what my role was on set — I didn’t feel as powerful as the man who was behaving inappropriately, which … strikes me as just stunning to say out loud, because there were plenty of occasions where it was happening and I was in a different position and I was as powerful,” she explained.
“I mean, I had every right to say, ‘This is inappropriate.’ I could have felt safe in going to a superior,” Parker continued.
She eventually sought help
There was apparently one incident that left Parker with no other choice but to tell her agent about the harassment.
“… Within hours, everything had changed … [My agent] said to them, ‘If this continues, I have sent her a ticket, a one-way ticket out of this city’ — where I was shooting — ‘and she will not be returning,’” she recalled.
While the environment improved afterward, she said, it wasn’t “perfectly pleasant.”
“I didn’t have to listen to jokes about me or my figure or what people thought they could talk me into doing,” she said. “All these men. All these men. That stopped.”
“The nature of the person who I felt was really the instigator, this was a grown man, a very big movie star and, you know, he was baked, meaning his personality, it was cooked,” she added. “He was a formed person and that wasn’t going to change. But I felt certainly better and safer, like I could finish what I had agreed to do.”
She said the rise of the #MeToo movement, which highlights and advocates against sexual misconduct, prompted her to speak out about the experience.
Is Sex and the City done?
As you probably know, the television series has spawned two movies since it ended in 2004. While there have been talks about a third, it doesn’t look likely.
While much of the cast appears to be down, Cattrall (Samantha Jones), has said that she’s ready to move on. She wrote on Instagram in 2017 that her “heart isn’t in it anymore” and that she prefers to “rest & not work as much as I have been doing for years.”
She reportedly didn’t like the plot, either. According to insiders, it centers around the death of Mr. Big.
“People close to Kim believe that the script didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha,” reporter James Andrew Miller said (via The Hollywood Reporter). “They point to the fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
If it somehow does come to fruition, hopefully, everyone has a positive experience on set.
