KEY POINTS:
Sarah Jessica Parker sweeps into a suite at Manhattan's Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking Central Park, slightly out of breath, and late. "I'm so sorry," she says effusively. "I hate to make people wait."
I should have quickly dismissed her apology and said, "Ten minutes is nothing" - after all, Parker and her Sex and the City galpals have kept us waiting for four years. What's a few minutes more?
But sarcasm doesn't seem appropriate to use on Parker, well-known as "a good girl". (She is prim, smattering her conversation with old-fashioned sayings; she doesn't swear and has a strict "non-nudity" clause in her contract.)
In person, her appeal is less high-wattage than her alter-ego's. Her demeanour is down-to-earth, she is often self- deprecating and is amused at the notion of her status as a style icon or relationship sexpert.
Throughout the interview there are definitely Carrie moments, particularly when Parker becomes animated on certain subjects ranging from motherhood, the alleged on-set feuding with co-star Kim Cattrall, to her unwitting status as the ambassador for all single women who move to New York in search of "love and labels".
But don't expect to see her living a life that resembles anything close to her character. "I don't even like to shop," she admits. "I never hang out with a bunch of girlfriends. Who has the time for that?"
Parker's life these days revolves around her family - husband Matthew Broderick and their 5-year-old son James - and, at last, the new Sex and the City movie.
It has been a long wait for patient fans and Parker, star and producer of the film, hopes they won't be disappointed. When the show's sixth season came to an end in 2004, the idea was for the famous foursome to seamlessly sashay on to the big screen.
The delay is rumoured to be because of catfights with Parker's fellow cast members - namely, Kim Cattrall, with whom Parker has allegedly had numerous power struggles over the years. "Look, I heard a number of differing stories about what happened and why we didn't make the movie at that time," says Parker.
"I never interrogated Kim. I always respected her choice. She had mentioned money a bunch of times and nobody should vilify her for that. I think people made a decision that we had [vilified her], and I think it was very unfair.
As it turns out, it's better that we had to wait because it's more interesting that these girls are older now. It was just the right time this time."
The film is not simply a repeat of the television series: the four girls - Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte - have moved on and the story has a more serious tone. All of the trademark elements are there though - snappy dialogue, raunchy sex scenes and designer fashion.
Unlike the perpetually optimistic TV series, the film's writer and director, Michael Patrick King, with whom Parker collaborated, delivers a message that life is not always a New York fairytale.
At 43, an age where her peers are well-versed on the subject of plastic surgery, Botox and other age-defying methods in order to preserve their careers, Parker, refreshingly, looks her age, despite maintaining a body the size of a teenage athlete. And ageing - one of the themes of the movie (after all, the girls are 10 years older) - is a subject that can't be ignored.
"I think I'm sharper now than I was when I was younger," says Parker. "But am I afraid of getting older? There are things that I'm really afraid of. But getting older, I think you can't battle it. I guess I'm reconciled to this process which you can't stop. You see attempts made constantly by people to stop it, but I just don't really want to do that. So you do the best you can and try to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Ultimately, you go with the flow. I love yoga and I love Pilates. I probably do them five to six times a week. It's less about vanity - it makes me feel strong and healthy - although there is some aspect of it that, obviously. Creams? I wear some creams like every other woman my age. I hear about the fine line miracle wrinkle cream and go out and buy it."
Although Parker reprises her famed role as the sassy sex columnist who became the iconic role model for single women, in real life she has been happily married to Broderick, also an actor, for 10 years and together they have a 5-year-old son, James Wilkie (named after Broderick's father and author Wilkie Collins, whom they both admire).
Unlike her contemporaries in Hollywood, it would seem Parker's marriage is remarkably sane. "Well, I don't know what an ideal marriage is. I suppose it's people having the relationship they want. I don't tend to talk about it.
I don't have a PhD on the subject. We just live our lives like anyone else. It's great to see your husband being a responsible father and to see how my son delights when he sees him," she smiles.
"And it is very good for us to have a child. I think it is good for our marriage, good for both of us. We're lucky enough to have a babysitter when needed. We try to go to dinner once every couple of months. So, we do the best we can."
And what about more children? She takes a breath. "I never answer this question because it's a no-win situation. If I say, 'I do [want more children]', then they say, 'poor her!' If I say I don't, they say, 'she's so cold!"'
Parker and Broderick have led oddly similar lives. As teens they played iconic whiz kids: he was Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and she was on the short-lived TV show, Square Pegs, as nerdy Patty Green. Both are half-Jewish, from theatre families with actor dads.
But Broderick hails from an intellectual family, and Parker grew up in relative poverty, hovering on the border between theatre gypsy and welfare. Born in Nelsonville, Ohio, Parker is the fourth of eight siblings and she was raised by her mother, a school teacher and her often out-of-work stepfather.
In an earlier interview, Parker revealed her embarrassment at how poor her family was. In the third grade at Clifton School in Cincinnati, her teacher called out her name for her to join the line each day for a free lunch from the state.
"We were on welfare," she told the New York Times. "I remember my childhood as Dickensian. I remember being poor. There was no great way to hide it. We didn't have electricity sometimes. We didn't have Christmases sometimes or we didn't have birthdays, or the bill collectors came, or the phone company would call and say, 'We're shutting your phones off.'
And we were all old enough to either get the calls or watch my mother's reactions or watch my parents shuffling the money around." Parker helped support the family at a young age and in 1976 won her first Broadway role.
The family packed up and moved to New Jersey to encourage her career and three years later she got her first break playing the title role of Annie on Broadway. Maturing into a working actress, Parker enjoyed a run of TV and movie roles, including LA Story, Honeymoon in Vegas, Miami Rhapsody, and The First Wives Club.
When she returned to television and landed the role of Carrie Bradshaw, her world changed forever. At one stage her single life resembled a page out of Bradshaw's column, having dated such high-profile men as Robert Downey jnr and John F. Kennedy jnr.
These days though, in between her acting commitments, she is happy to be a wife and mother. In Parker's normal life, she spends time taking her son to the park without the assistance of a nanny. "The only thing I have in common with Carrie is our love for Manolo Blahniks," she jokes.
"I mean, you've seen how I normally dress from looking at the tabloids? I wear flat shoes. I have a very small wardrobe at home. Like every other mother, I'm just trying to get my son out of the house, get him breakfast, get his lunch packed and get him to school on time." Parker can often be seen dressed down, sans makeup.
"Don't get me wrong. I love clothes and I love being able to wear beautiful clothes and have the opportunity that I can borrow beautiful things. But it's just not the way most of my day works." In the hotel suite in Manhattan today, Parker is dressed to the nines in a chartreuse Dolce & Gabbana mini dress and beige Fendi shoes.
But, she confesses, it all goes back at the end of the day. The most successful of the Sex and the City foursome, Parker - who has launched successful perfumes Lovely and Covet, as well as a budget fashion line, Bitten - has starred in four films since the show ended, in a bid to separate herself from her alter ego.
One of the best things about reprising her Bradshaw role has been the return to high fashion, admits Parker. Costume designer, Patricia Field (The Devil Wears Prada), seems to take delight in putting her and the other three women in the most outlandish of outfits - the more outrageous the better - with oversized accessories and, occasionally, undersized clothing.
In the movie, Carrie Bradshaw wears 81 different outfits. Does one ever say to Field, "This outfit is too much! I can't wear it." Parker laughs. "No! Never, never, never! I would never say no, because I am playing a character and she has as much as idea as I do. You don't hire somebody like Patricia Field and start putting the clamps down. Even if her choice proves to be wrong, it's a great way to go out. Big miss, or big hit."
For the show, itself, "big hit" is definitely the best description. "So much has been said and analysed about the popularity and legacy of the series," says Parker.
"It's very unattractive for us to speculate about what impact we may have had, but when I see four women walking down the street together, or at a restaurant, I recognise that. I know the source and I know that women feel more comfortable talking amongst each other about things that are intimate, or just being forthright and candid.
But I also wonder, was this a confluence? Did we want to tell a story at a time when a generation of women were ready? Yeah, it was the first voice of its kind, but also, this generation was very ready for that. That's the way they speak with each other," she says with the same intensity as her onscreen character.
"But I don't speak like that with my friends. No, I think it was one of those fortuitous things. I don't think we are responsible for how women behave differently - better or worse, but I think we are part of a change. And that was just good fortune and timing, I think. And good writing."
Some may say the writing was so convincing that, like it or not, Parker currently embodies the image of a modern day Statue of Liberty. Equally amused as she is horrified by the idea of welcoming young women to the city that never sleeps, she laughs.
"What are you saying? Am I responsible for every young woman who arrives from Columbus, Ohio, and expects Woody Allen to meet them at the Port Authority? I can't shepherd every young woman who comes to New York," she says, animatedly.
"I came to New York because of literature. Therefore, is Philip Roth accountable for that? Was Woody Allen scrutinised for every Jew that came to New York from Columbus, Ohio?" she asks. "New York has always been a place where people come and pursue a dream. You can have triumphs and fail and get up and do it again. It's just that our show explained that in a different way." She sips her tea.
"But this is not reportage. This is not a documentary. It is fiction." Fiction aside, the themes in this movie are very real. For one, that unanswerable question, what do women want in their 40s? Parker may play a sexual anthropologist on screen, but she is the first to dispel any myths about her knowledge on the subject.
"Well, I can't speak for women everywhere. I have never been a counsellor or therapist, so I don't know what women want. Everybody wants different things. Some women love the idea of marriage. Some don't get married, some are lesbians and some women have children but never get married.
"Seriously, I know as much as you on the subject and I'm not equipped to talk about it," she laughs. "I'm not Carrie. I never give advice. Ever."
* Sex and the City: The Movie opens at New Zealand cinemas on June 5.
- NZ Herald
