Candid Candace

Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell opens up to Phoebe Watt about her new memoir-style book and reveals a life that is as raw and real as it is glamorous

I’ve got 25 minutes with Candace Bushnell before she has to leave for a barbecue at a friend’s place and unfortunately for me, her poodles won’t settle. Frequently featured on her Instagram paddle-boarding or paddle-boating or both, they’re barking down the line from the Hamptons where I’ve reached the 60-year-old Sex and the City author on one of three phone numbers provided by her publicist, “in case there’s a last minute reason she’s called back to New York.”

It’s Monday morning my time; 5pm Sunday for her, and while I’m suffering through the depths of an Auckland winter, she’s melting in a heatwave. “It’s too hot!” she exclaims. “Too hot to be outside!” As such, she’s spent the day indoors, filling in email Q&As for various publications. “Tomorrow is meant to be a little cooler, so I’m doing lunch by the pool at my girlfriend’s house around the cove,” she says, emphasising ‘pool’ and ‘girlfriend’s’ and ‘cove’ in a performative way, like she’s playing the most clichéd socialite version of herself. Later, she describes the Hamptons as being where rich New Yorkers go in the summer. “Except I live here all year!”

It’s delivered with the same, almost endearing lack of self-awareness that’s peppered throughout her new book, Is There Still Sex in the City? in which she cries poor, despite owning a total of three properties in affluent areas of New York and Connecticut.