Less sex, more marriage, kids and career, the same fabulous fashion - Sex and The City author Candace Bushnell's latest New York City gal pals are brought to life on new series Lipstick Jungle. SARA VILKOMERSON writes
KEY POINTS:
On a cold and blustery January afternoon, the cast and crew of Lipstick Jungle, the new series premiering on TV3 on October 21,scuttle about the Ukrainian Institute of America in Manhattan. Bright lights illuminate the high ceilings, ornate mouldings and chandeliers within the 1898 mansion, standing in as a billionaire bachelor's New York City apartment. Banks of additional lights outside the building create artificial sunlight streaming through the windows. The grand staircase is covered in plastic wrap. At the top, Brooke Shields - tall, sleek and TV makeup-ready - waits in a puffy winter coat (heat, apparently, not high on the list of priorities) to be called in front of the cameras, and tries to placate her daughter, 4-year-old Rowan, who wonders, insistently, how much longer. The blond little girl attempts to stare down her famous mother. The two heads come together for some whispered negotiations, before Shields pulls Rowan cosily on to her lap. "Sorry," she says with the universal what-can-you-do mummy smile. "We had a little bit of a change of schedule today."
There is something awfully appropriate about witnessing this scene, as Lipstick Jungle, based on the best-selling novel by Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, tackles the subject of three high-powered Manhattan women juggling their big-time jobs, their relationships, friendships and -in Shields' character's case - kids.
With Lipstick Jungle, the powers-that-be at its American broadcaster NBC are hoping to capture the millions of viewers whose longing for Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte has not been slaked since the hit HBO show went off the air in 2004.
"It's a jungle out there. Dress accordingly" is the show's tag line; the trailers and adverts not-so-subtly suggest the show's Sex and The City lineage, with glamour shots of high heels striding on sidewalks and the three female leads showing plenty of leg and cleavage. But the creators of the show stress its move into new territory.
"In Sex and The City, the shocking thing was women talking about sex," said Candace Bushnell, who is one of Lipstick Jungle's executive producers. "But today, women still have a hard time talking about ambition."
The blond, blue-eyed Bushnell, who is a dedicated presence on set, is perfectly coiffed and surprisingly delicate in dark jeans (and, yes, fashionably pointy high heels).
"Sex isn't forbidden - there are women having Tupperware parties with sex toys - but saying you want to be CEO or president of the United States? You're not supposed to say that unless you're 12 and then no one takes you seriously."
"I like that it's not only about the happily ever after," says Shields. "What I love about these women is that the goal is not finding the man and having that be the only type of happiness. We spend so much of our younger years thinking that's what you have to get: you have to get the relationship, you have to get the family... Now when you're actually in it, when you get what you wished for, how do you spend your days in it?"
The three main characters of Lipstick Jungle are Wendy Healy (Shields), a married movie mogul; Nico Reilly (Kim Raver), a Vanity Fair-like editor in chief, also married; and Victory Ford (Lindsay Price) a fashion designer who dates a billionaire named Joe Bennett, played by 80s heartthrob Andrew McCarthy. (All three women are described in Bushnell's book as being in their early 40's; NBC describes them as "30- and 40-somethings.")
The pilot opens with the information that all three women have made it on to a list of "New York City's 50 Most Powerful Women," as they meet for Victory's fashion show - which is slammed in the press the following day. The trio assemble to consoleher with alternating advice. ("You can use the house in Montauk," says Wendy. "The freezer in the garage is stocked with Dove bars and weed."
Nico counsels her not to show defeat: "I find it offensive that women always feel that we have to apologise for our success. There is no luck, there's just talent and hard work, and the ability to bounce back when you're knocked down." Quips Wendy, "And I always thought she just screwed her way to the top.")
Their individual story lines are set into place neatly: Wendy, who spends the pilot trying to nail down Leonardo DiCaprio to a film project, is struggling with her child's private school application and the resentment of her less successful husband. Nico, who senses a male co-worker is trying to usurp her position with the boss (played by Julian Sands), feels ignored by her husband and contemplates an affair with a young hottie played by Robert Buckley (who had the female contingent of the crew in a full-on swoon). And Victory sets about getting her fashion line back on track while beginning to date big-bucks Joe Bennett. Fantasy elements firmly in place (Joe sends his private jet to whisk Victory home!), the show's heart emerges in scenes of the three women together being warm, supportive and irreverent.
"When I signed on, I moved it as close to thirtysomething as I could," said Timothy Busfield, the TV acting veteran from that iconic drama, as well as The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Along with Bushnell and Oliver Goldstick, he is an executive producer of Lipstick Jungle and is also directing most of the initial episodes.
"I really wanted this show to be about the little problems," he said. "I do not like necessarily, even in our show, when we get too hijinks-orientated. Too high profile. I'd love the show to be, at its core, about the difficulty of the working mum, a leader in the workplace, who still is a mum and wife who provides for her husband and kids. My dream moment is to see Brooke come home after an enormously long day and have to load the dishwasher. Those little problems - not the business going under, or flying to Scotland to get J.K. Rowling. That stuff? Great, we have it. But the matters of self-doubt and overcoming self-doubt, that is what the show is about."
He also expects the show to offer sympathetic and complex male characters. "I felt the men were a little two-dimensional on Sex and The City," said Busfield, adding, "I think men's reaction to Sex and The City is like women's reaction to The Three Stooges.
"I want the male audience," he continued. "I want them to think, 'What can I do better?'" He laughed. "They laugh, but the actresses know I want to shoot them like John Wayne. They're all John Wayne to me. Shoot the costumes, get the moments, let me see the spurs."
Before Lipstick Jungle went into production, it was already creating drama. Last October, The New York Times reported on a fallout between Bushnell and her close friend, Sex and The City executive producer Darren Star. The gist: Star had bid for rights to develop the novel Lipstick Jungle for television in 2005; NBC reportedly doubled his bid, and won. Later, Bushnell learned Star had proceeded to develop a show with a strikingly similar theme to that of her book, with Working Girl screenwriter Kevin Wade - Cashmere Mafia.
Cashmere Mafia screened and lasted seven episodes, whereas Lipstick Jungle has been renewed for a second season, which started in the US last month.
Back on the Lipstick Jungle set, Price huddles deeper into her coat as her character Victory's wardrobe is packed up and returned. "I wanted to do this show so badly," she says. "It was like having a crush on someone so much, you almost write it off."
Her budding friendship with Shields and Raver has paralleled that of their characters.
"Within our friendship we have an older, middle, and younger sister tone in real life that plays very much," she said. "It's natural. The work comes easily."
She looks out of a window, where the sun is setting and dousing Central Park in a late winter glow. "This role is so glamorous and fun and romantic - look where we're sitting. Look at Fifth Avenue!"
What will Sex and The City fans see?
The biggest difference for audiences, initially, will be Lipstick Jungle's hour-long format. And while the clothes may still be stunning, the subtext is more grown-up. Sex and The City not only celebrated the state of singlehood in New York, it also heavily influenced that state; it created a generation of 20-something women, who are currently living in this city, who knew about Manolo Blahniks, cosmopolitans and toxic bachelors before ever setting foot on the island and who have set about replicating it from their thin-walled Murray Hill apartments.
Take a look around some Saturday night, and you'll see them, in groups of four or five, dressed carefully, and saying "fabulous" and "f***" a lot.
Lipstick Jungle does not seem out to swill cosmos or get weak-kneed over boy toys. No naked Samantha careening about town or group giggles over Rabbit vibrators. And with a longer running time, it will have an opportunity to explore deeper, murkier ground. (Though you can bet the private jet will always be gassed-up on the tarmac.) The sisterly comradeship that magnetized viewers to Sex and The City has survived intact. (Though when the ladies convene, they are just as likely to discuss their jobs or private schools as the men in their life.) And the main sexual relationships onscreen are - gulp - marriages: the first two episodes go places that Sex and The City didn't spend much time in, like how scary and queasy a relationship can be when there are children involved and two people are committed to making it work. Or how lonely it can feel inside a marriage.
Bushnell was asked how her city has changed since she wrote the first Sex and The City column in 1994. "I think the tenor of the city hasn't changed," she said. "It's still a place to come and make it. The patterns are still there - they come to New York, they're working up, they look up at the so-called establishment and the young want to tear it down and take its place. As time goes on they become hot and they become the establishment. And then everybody has kids and moves to Brooklyn." She laughed. "It's the city that people come to make it, a certain kind of maverick person. It was true in Edith Wharton's day and it was true in 1994 and it's certainly true today."
LOWDOWN
What: Sex and The City creator Candace Bushnell's latest small screen adaptation, Lipstick Jungle
When and where: Tuesday 21 October, 9.30pm, TV3
