‘Sex and the City’: When Did Carrie Bradshaw Move to Manhattan?
For Sex and the City fans, it feels like Carrie Bradshaw has always been in Manhattan. Despite her knowledge of the city, the fictional sex columnist was not a born and raised New Yorker. The original series didn’t delve too deeply into Carrie’s upbringing, and what she has said about her early life greatly deviates from The Carrie Diaries.
Still, we have a pretty good sense of exactly when she started her love affair with Manhattan. Carrie Bradshaw moved to Manhattan as a 20-something and never left.
When did Carrie Bradshaw move to Manhattan?
Carrie Bradshaw carved out a niche in Manhattan as a sex columnist after arriving in 1986. When Sex and the City began in 1998, Carrie was 32 years old, which means she was born in 1966. If she came to Manhattan in June 1986, she was headed into her 20s as she forged a new, independent life. According to Summer in the City, Candace Bushnell’s prequel novel, Carrie opted to forgo college to move into the city despite an offer to attend Brown University.
While June 1986 is generally accepted as the day Carrie Bradshaw arrived in Manhattan, there are some inconsistencies. In the 2008 movie Sex and the City: The Movie, Carrie said she had lived in Manhattan for 20 years. The assertion would suggest she arrived in the city in 1988, not 1986.
There are issues with Miranda and Charlotte’s timelines, too
A few inconsistencies with Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan arrival timeline do exist, but that’s common amongst her group of friends. There are issues with the timetable surrounding Miranda Hobbes and Charlotte York’s moves to New York, too.
In several Sex and the City projects, Carrie states that she met Charlotte on a subway car in 1987, a year after she arrived in Manhattan. Charlotte is believed to have been born in 1967, which would have made her 20 years old when she and Carrie met. In the original series, Charlotte noted that she graduated from Smith College. Traditionally, most people graduate from college at 21 or 22. That means she likely would not have moved to Manhattan until 1988 or 1989, at the earliest. Smith College is located in Massachusetts.
Carrie once said she met Miranda in 1989, two years after she met Charlotte. Miranda should have also been in Massachusetts when she allegedly met Carrie in Manhattan. According to the original series, Miranda graduated from Harvard University in 1990. In 1989, she should have been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The lawyer never spoke about her time in Cambridge, though.
When did Samantha Jones arrive in Manhattan?
Samantha Jones might be a fan favorite, but she’s the Sex and the City character we learned the least about, at least regarding Samantha’s family and background. Fans did learn that Samantha had siblings, but they have yet to find out where she came from or when she arrived in Manhattan.
Considering Samantha was about a decade older than her best pals, we can assume she arrived in the city upon college graduation. The year would have been 1979 or 1980. Carrie never mentioned the year she met Samantha but stated she knew her as a bartender at CBGB. We can assume Samantha served as a mentor to Carrie as she was still learning the ropes.
