Posted Friday, June 1, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
"Sex and the City" this month celebrates its 20th anniversary of the show's release on HBO, a truly groundbreaking series that seemed frivolous on the surface but captured a much deeper representation of friends as family and how single women live their lives in the new century.
And there's a book coming out Tuesday June 5 that should satisfy any aficionado of that dramedy, which ran from 1998 to 2004. It is readily available on demand now for any Amazon Prime subscriber. And it still runs in syndication late night on E! with some of the naughtiest parts cut out.
Called "Sex and the City and Us," the book is written by New Yorker and former Entertainment Weekly scribe Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. She also wrote the 2016 best-selling book about the 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld" called "Seinfeldia." (Read my interview with her from the time that book came out.)
“It’s not about the shoes and the cosmos,” Armstrong said about “Sex and the City.” “Those were incidental. This was a show for women who didn’t have a show like this before.”
While most of the key players from "Seinfeld" declined to talk to her, Armstrong had much better access to those who made "Sex and the City" possible including creator Darren Star, the New York Observer columnist who inspired the series Candace Bushnell and Carrie Bradshaw herself Sarah Jessica Parker.
And for Armstrong, who ended up breaking up with her fiance when she moved to New York to live a “Sex and the City” type of life in the early 2000s, this book was far more personal to her. Plus, while researching the book, she was able to chronicle its wide cultural impact even if fewer people may have watched the show on HBO than viewers who caught “Seinfeld” on NBC.
“I don’t think anyone has left a relationship because of ‘Seinfeld,’ “ she said. “And I don’t think you had to watch ‘Sex and the City’ to know what it was. It got that big.”
Read this excerpt from the book showing how the four lead actresses were cast
Armstrong enjoyed talking to Bushnell, whose actual story she felt has been under-told. “She was a lot like Carrie Bradshaw,” the author said. “She was wearing Dolce & Cabana while sleeping on a friend’s pullout couch. She really did live that life. I love how scrappy she is.”
The way the show portrayed not just single women but gay culture was edgy at the time but is often considered tame (or weirdly naive) in 2018. For instance, Carrie’s character ran out of a party flustered because someone was (gasp!) bi-sexual despite the fact she is supposedly a sex columnist.
“The episodes that strike us insane now show how far we’ve come on a lot of issues regarding gender and sexuality and race,” she said.
And the book doesn’t shy away from the fact the show (like “Friends”) was very, very white and its attempts to pepper in some diversity didn’t always land cleanly. At the same time, the show had its fans among minorities. Armstrong interviewed a few who loved the show despite being very aware of its faults.
“They were used to watching shows with all white people,” Armstrong said. “They’d laugh it off and enjoyed the parts of the show they wanted to enjoy.”
Armstrong, as she did in “Seinfeldia,” gets some of her coolest insights and stories from the writers of the show. They are not just more accessible but haven’t been interviewed 1,000 times like the stars of the show.
She also examines the supposed "feud" between Parker and Kim Cattrall, who played super-confident, super sexual publicist Samantha. While they were not best friends, the fact they didn't hang out together off set didn't mean they were "feuding." "I think there was some sexism there," Armstrong said. "And I can see how the actors would get irritated if journalists kept asking them about it for 20 years."
She was unable to reach Cynthia Nixon, who played flinty, unfiltered attorney Miranda. But Nixon's run for New York governor gives Armstrong's book a little bonus shot of adrenaline. (She was able to get a quick mention of Nixon's efforts into the book just under the deadline wire.)
Nixon - who grew up in New York and embodies the city as much as the show did - is very much an underdog against incumbent Andrew Cuomo. But Armstrong said Nixon resonates with many women. "I wouldn't under-estimate the power of 'Sex and the City,' " Armstrong said. "She's symbolically important to a lot of women. On top of that, she's really really smart. Her love of New York comes through."
Indeed, it wouldn't be far fetched for her fictional character Miranda to run for governor. "This is the 'Sex and the City' finale we all deserve," Armstrong joked. (She was in favor of Carrie and Big not reuniting in the series finale.)
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