Sarah Jessica Parker has no time for Carrie Bradshaw’s haters and has revealed that she finds “controversy” over her Sex And The City character “interesting” when compared with the backlash male leads in other popular series receive.
Speaking to HuffPost, SJP who recently demonstrated the ultimate way to wear a gingham dress, said that she tries not to look at the discourse online over what she called Carrie’s “bad decisions” in the show – and jokingly put her fingers in her ears when she was asked about “controversy” over the iconic character.
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“I don’t know about the controversy – I don’t want to know about the controversy,” she said. “I don’t know probably as much as you’re alluding to [about those conversations]. I would simply say that smart people make bad decisions sometimes [and] are foolish in judgment.”
Carrie Bradshaw has been a divisive character ever since Sex And The City first aired over 25 years ago. People still take issue with her, citing her supposedly self-centered outlook, what they believe to be her closed-minded approach to sex, and – the big one – her divisive on-again-off-again love story with Mr Big.
SJP isn’t here to defend those choices and is the first person to admit that Carrie has “made mistakes” and “not been in mature in love.”
However, she says that Carrie is unfairly judged over those choices when she is fundamentally a “good person” when compared to other popular male characters in similar series.
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“I think, fundamentally, Carrie is an extraordinarily decent and good person – an extremely devoted friend, she’s generous of spirit and time, in all she has to offer,” she said.
“It’s always interesting to me that [this is] so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him. And if a woman has an affair, or behaves poorly, or spends money foolishly […] there’s a kind of punitive response to it,” she added.
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However, SJP believes that the controversy can be a positive thing, with it showing just how dedicated and engaged in the show Sex And The City and And Just Like That fans really are.
She explained, “I ultimately think that all those feelings are pretty fantastic. That kind of connection and those kinds of strong feelings, both positive and negative, are pretty wonderful. People are kind of captive in those moments to something, and I think that’s perfectly fine.
“I just think, it’s just interesting, the ways in which we judge women, and not men.”
