Sarah Jessica Parker Defends Criticism of Her Sex and the City Character Carrie Bradshaw: ‘She’s a Survivor’

Sarah Jessica Parker is proud to play Carrie Bradshaw.

The actress, 60, appeared on the June 18 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she opened up about the legacy of her iconic Sex and the City role. Ever since the series began in 1998, Parker said it was “exciting” to take on such a bold character.

“First of all, the way she was speaking, like her choice of language, I’d never seen or heard a woman talk like that,” she recalled of Carrie, adding that she respected “her candor” and “curiosity about sex and sexual politics.”

“Which is not like me — I don’t talk about that at all even with friends,” Parker noted. “I’ll talk about it globally, but I don’t sit and share intimate details of my life that way.”

Parker was inspired by Carrie’s relatability and flaws, despite criticism from fans.

Carrie is a sex columnist (based on the show’s writer, Candace Bushnell, who was the author of The New York Observer’s “Sex and the City” column), and Parker shared that she always liked how “circumspect” she was about how the world’s issues related to women.

“I admired that she was scrappy,” the Hocus Pocus alum revealed. “She was a little survivor. She had instincts to keep her head [up], not always making smart choices and falling short of being the best friend or the best girlfriend or her best self, but I also was very happy that they were writing her that way.”

While viewers have criticized Carrie for many of those bad decisions, like having an affair with Chris Noth’s Mr. Big while he was married and she was dating Aiden (John Corbett), Parker shared that she never felt “frustrated” in the role.

“There’s a sentiment sometimes that she’s frustrating or she’s selfish or she makes poor decisions or she doesn’t manage her money well,” Parker acknowledged. “Yeah, all of that has been true over the course of the last 25 years. But she’s also been hugely loyal, decent, reliable, a really good friend, generous, available, present, comforting, giving of herself in big, in small ways, that are private and public, to her and among her friends. And, she loves.”

“If I were watching her and if I were her friend and I would see a misstep or see her keep repeating something, you know, however she was choosing to deal with Big, I’m sure I would feel frustration,” she continued. “But as an actor playing it, I want all of it. I want all of it.”

Parker thinks backlash toward Carrie is an example of the public’s double standards for men and women.

Parker, who reprised her role as Carrie in 2021 for the spinoff series And Just Like That…, further explained that she has seen the public be much quicker to “forgive our male leads” while harping on the mistakes of women.

“It was just very curious to me,” she admitted. “They’d say she’s selfish, and I was like, I can give you 10 reasons and ways in which she wasn’t, and you’re hyper-fixated on this.”

“But I can absolutely understand if you’re along for the ride you can be like, ‘Lady! Girl!’” she laughed.

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Calling it “wonderful” to have a part in “something that people have such strong feelings for and against,” Parker also pointed out that “those feelings can change.”

“Carrie matures too,” she said. “There wouldn’t really be a show if she had been a more stellar, consistently stellar human being. That’s it. The end.”