SMART AND SEXY

Is the New York-based actress, who is also a producer on Sex, worried about too much exposure?

“I always worry about everything being right,” admits Parker, the iconic Sex’s single everywoman Carrie Bradshaw. “I loved being part of Smart People … But you do worry. You kind of are taught that people don’t want to see smart movies and that adults don’t go to the theatres.

In Smart People, Parker’s Dr Janet Hartigan gets reacquainted with the grumpy literature professor she had a crush on in college when he lands in her ER. Dennis Quaid’s Professor Wetherhold has lost his wife and gone through numerous other midlife crises since they last met, making him even more anti-social than she remembers. His overachieving teenage daughter (Juno’s Ellen Page) hates the idea of sharing her dad with anyone else, and Janet has her own problems relating to men. Despite all that, a very, very tentative romance ensues.

“It’s a great story about real people,” Parker says of novelist Mark Poirier’s first produced screenplay. “He has keen insight into what it is to be broken, to be desirous of love and simply not be equipped to pursue it, and what it is to be very bright and still not be able to communicate things.”

Parker began her career as a child dancer in Ohio before moving on to the Broadway production of Annie and has continued to appear on stage, sometimes opposite husband Matthew Broderick. The main thing she loves about Smart People is that it’s different from anything else she’s done.

Much as she digs a new challenge, Parker admits that she was over the moon to get the Sex and the City reunion film launched after many false starts.

“Every disappointment, every devastation, every dead end, every time it fell apart didn’t matter in the end,” she gushes. “Oh my God, getting back together with the girls was amazing, and I’m probably more in touch with them all now than I even was then.”

The movie, which takes place three years after the 1998-2004 HBO series ended, will find Carrie still together with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), and her three BFFs—man-hungry Samantha (Kim Cattrall), prim and proper Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and cynical Miranda (Cynthia Nixon)—all deeply involved in their own relationships. Parker doesn’t want to give away specifics about what brings the quartet back together but she does assure us that the movie will be as blunt-spoken and raunchy as the comedy’s best episodes. Though perhaps a little more mature. But just as insightful, with any luck, about how women view love, sex and men in this day and age.

Since the TV show ended, Parker has been more than content to appear in the occasional movie and pursue other interests.

“I have a company that produces for HBO,” she explains. “I’ve got a new fragrance coming out called Pure Bloom; it’s a sister to Covet. And I work on my clothing line. But most importantly, I’m a mom. My son, James, is 5 1/2; it’s always a fun time to be a mom, but this is particularly good.”

Parker can’t be anything other than grateful for her Sex and the City fame.

“It radically changed my life in numerous ways, some more important than others. But it was an absolute blessing, like something that just fell out of the sky and I was lucky enough to be standing there to catch it.

“That was me. I was a lucky catcher.
(NYT)