The Art of Being SJP

Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw was a totem for a generation of single girls. Now the actress and producer tackles an entirely different relationship drama in HBO’s Divorce. (And to be clear, this isn’t “Sex and the City moves to the suburbs”)

- Anne Fulenwider

My first job in New York was as a P.A. on Sarah Jessica Parker’s 1996 movie If Lucy Fell. Tasked with guarding a stack of equipment underneath the Brooklyn Bridge overnight, I was promoted to Sarah Jessica’s stand-in when her own didn’t show up. This required me to ride a bike back and forth across the bridge until the crew got the lighting for the scene right so filming could begin. If you had told me then that in 20 years I would be interviewing Sarah for a magazine I would edit, I might have fallen off that bike. But here I am, at her office in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, which is lined with dozens and dozens of shoes (from her SJP collection and others). People like to talk to her about shoes, but as she says, “I love shoes, but I also love books and architecture and politics and other people and travel and conflict.” So we talked at length about all those things and more, including her latest project: starring in and executive producing Divorce, which premieres on HBO in October.

ANNE FULENWIDER: So tell me about the genesis of this show. When did you come up with the idea?