January 28, 2002 (February 2002 Issue)

Manhattan Rhapsody

As Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker has come to symbolize all that is possible in New York City: sudden fame, endless shopping, and, yes, sex. But as the Apple confronts its changed landscape, Sally singer asks, what does the horizon hold for its favorite star?

By Sally Singer, Vogue

It is August 2001, and Sarah Jessica Parker is in the Vogue offices shooting the episode of Sex and the City in which Carrie Bradshaw, the journalist played by SJ—that's what her buddies call her—visits the Vogue offices to see her editors. Carrie is writing an article about handbags at $4.50 a word, a rate nobody at Vogue is ever paid, and wearing a Vivienne Westwood pin-striped suit that nobody at Vogue would wear to work (too theatrically chic). Carrie is also drunk, which nobody at Vogue ever is, thank you very much. On the other hand, she is meeting an editor, Candice Bergen, who wears an eccentrically gorgeous skirt identical to a one-off Bill Blass famously worn by an actual editor at the magazine; and she is sporting Manolo Blahniks and a choppy bob—both very Vogue. The man responsible for said bob, Serge Normant, is on hand to monitor SJ's new do and soak up compliments for it.

At one point, SJ is approached by the twelve-year-old daughter of a fellow actor. "You cut your hair—really smart move," says the girl. She turns to Normant: "Really good move." SJ laughs politely. She is used to strangers weighing in on her business as if it were theirs, especially in matters of style, where SJ is an expert. Between takes, she notices a Penn photograph from 1947 and observes, "You can see where everything comes from—the neckline Alber did at YSL, all that draping at Callaghan." Then she gets on her cell phone and calls the good folks at Manolo Blahnik to ascertain the exact age of a pair of patent-leather stiletto mary janes that play a key role in the script. Carrie Bradshaw may wear the wrong suit to Vogue, but SJ, it seems, is a professional fashion insider.

Or is she? At the Marc Jacobs spring 2002 show, SJ arrives in a tight lace dress by Dolce & Gabbana, black-lace high heels, and an embroidered evening wrap. Then, as she takes her front-row seat, she notices that her counterparts across the catwalk are in all manner of murky, shrunken denim. "I feel like the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who gets invited to prom and then overdoes everything," she sighs. It's SJ's first runway outing since the fall 2000 season, when she attended six shows and, she feels, took a whole lot of uncalled-for flak for doing her job: She is, after all, the producer of a show in which, as she puts it, "fashion is the fifth character." At any rate, SJ has been missed. Countless fashion types, who are not normally inclined to starstruck behavior, ask to have their pictures taken with her. A young man begs her to take his cell phone and inform his girlfriend that he loves her. ("If you've never told her you love her, I shouldn't be the one to do it," she protests as she takes the phone.) And, inevitably, a backstage stylist approaches and offers to "do something" with her hair, which has been slicked into a ponytail. SJ pulls out a chuckle from the portfolio of good-natured responses she carries in response to the thousand and one instances of effrontery that she endures daily.

But this is September 10, when SJ's bobbed hair passes for news in a city that considers itself perfectly sketched by a TV series devoted to cocktails, clothing, and coital shenanigans. On September 10, SJ's iconicity is readily understood: She is Sarah Jessica, the child star made good who propelled HBO into the big time and whose every outing on the red carpet launches a thousand sales. ("She's one of my miracle workers in America," says Manolo Blahnik. "People come to us and ask, 'Do you have the shoes that Sarah Jessica wore?' ") She is the face of Garnier and can bleach a nation lickety-split (within four days of her ads' debut run, the company saw a 35 to 40 percent increase in hair-dye sales). And, of course, she is Carrie Bradshaw, our proxy misadventuress in matters of the heart and purse, and our favorite embodiment of New York. Old New York, that is. As Carrie Bradshaw might have put it: What becomes of the dramatic face of a city when the city's face changes dramatically?

About a week after the World Trade Center attacks, Sarah Jessica Parker cochairs a fund-raising dinner for New Yorkers for Children, a charity that helps foster kids. What was supposed to have been one of the biggest galas of the season ends up as the city's first formal attempt to party. It is a subdued but extraordinary evening. Mayor Giuliani and Plácido Domingo turn up to cheer the emergency-service heroes, and Parker, wearing a black minidress by Oscar de la Renta, gives a gallant speech with an unforgettable punch line: "New Yorkers always have the right accessories; and this season the two accessories that everyone is carrying are courage and pride." In private, Parker admits that she had to be strong because others around her—her husband, Matthew Broderick, and some of her four brothers—were finding things difficult. "I'm more determined than ever to stay in this city," she says, twirling a lock of that controversial bob. "I've never felt like more of a New Yorker."

Like so many New Yorkers, Sarah Jessica Parker is actually from elsewhere: Cincinnati, in her case. Her parents divorced when she was still a baby, and she and her three Parker siblings—she subsequently acquired four half-siblings—started life culturally rich but financially poor. They studied drama and ballet on scholarships and were encouraged by their left-wing-activist mother to read The New Yorker (to this day, every Parker offspring can be found with a New Yorker secreted somewhere on his or her person). Looking stylish was a priority. "My mother always made sure that we were dressed to the nines," says her older sister, Rachel. "She'd say, 'You're not going out with me dressed like that.' " The girls wore smocked dresses by Polly Flinders bought for 99 cents at the company's outlet store. All the little Parkers received free lunches at school and suffered the stigma attached to being welfare recipients in a middle-class community. As her brother Toby remembers, "We didn't have a lot of resources. We didn't have a lot of money. We had two different personae as a family—a very successful one career-wise, and another that had to take advantage of certain programs. For the children, that created a conflict. Being poor is hard on families. It's hard on the parents, and it becomes an emotional burden for the whole family." SJ remembers the hard times a bit differently: "I like the family that we became because of the situation. It felt literary to me."

This trait—of seeing the world as a place of familial enchantment—emerged during the photo shoot for this article, when SJ related every outfit to a wisp of childhood. Oscar de la Renta's wide-leg trousers and off-shoulder, shirred peasant top reminded her of her mom at potluck dinners in the seventies; the elaborate beading on a cocktail dress from Carolina Herrera "reminds me of my grandmother's cigarette box"; and a slashed and droopy mini-tunic by Imitation of Christ "reminds me of standing in line at Area in 1983"—where her then-boyfriend, Robert Downey, Jr., worked. (Yes, they lived together for eight years. Yes, she knew he was using. No, she's never used a drug in her life. Yes, she tried to save him. No, he was too far gone. Yes, she left him. No, there are no hard feelings.)

SJ's romantic disposition perhaps stems from the blue-collar fairy tale of her mother's second marriage to a trucker called Paul Forste, the man that SJ calls father. The couple wed when Sarah was three. By the time she and Toby were in middle school, they had already enjoyed theatrical success—Sarah in a Cincinnati children's television special of The Little Matchgirl at age eight, and Sarah and Toby in Harold Pinter's Broadway production of The Innocents. Partly because of this and partly because Paul wanted to start a business to take stage shows on the road, the family loaded up their VW van and moved to the big city. Arriving in New York, they dropped SJ off at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in time for her audition for The Milliken Breakfast Show. She got the part. They got two rooms at the Holiday Inn in Yonkers. Eventually the family settled in Englewood, New Jersey, where SJ spent a year at public high school before attending the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. At this point she was starring in Annie and working with the likes of Bob Hope. "I guess it was pretty exciting, but even at age twelve I knew he was a Republican."

Although all but two of her siblings were and are theatrically inclined—there's an actor, a screenwriter, a camerawoman, a stagehand, a lead production assistant—they felt no performing-monkey weirdness growing up. Talk to Sarah and the other Parker kids, and you'll be struck by how sane and wholesome and unassuming they are … thanks to Mom. "Mom's politically liberal and personally conservative—never extravagant or extroverted," says Sarah's brother Pippin. "To a certain extent, we are all that way, modest." "The thing my mom did better than anything is that she created a small town amongst the children," remembers SJ. "She made us very dependent on one another." On 9/11, eight not-so-little Parkers/Forstes were gathered by 10:30 a.m. at the Parker/Broderick town house in the West Village—"everyone except my parents, who live in New Jersey. They couldn't get across the bridge," SJ says. "We ate three square meals that day. Matthew made a whole thing of pasta."

It's extraordinary how often SJ's friends think of her as a sister or daughter. "I have never met her parents," Jeanne Tripplehorn says, "but if I were her mother I'd be so proud. She's evolved into a beautifully rounded woman." Ron Rifkin, a close friend she made while doing The Substance of Fire and her costar in the Vogue episode of Sex and the City, says, "Somebody did something right. She has an old-world quality about her. As chic as she is and as elegant as she is, she just takes you back to a time when things were nicer, when people made desserts for each other and left them at the doorstep with no fuss." Says Philip Seymour Hoffman, who worked with SJ on David Mamet's State and Main, "She's a pretty famous person, but when you're around her you don't feel that. Her priorities are in order. Friends and family and her husband—those things mean a lot to her." And, like Mom, SJ is prudish. "She's really shy about talking about sex or anything like that," says a friend of many years, the television consultant Jennifer Nicholson. Director David Frankel remembers that "when she was deciding to take on Sex, the biggest downside was that she had to say cunnilingus in the pilot, which, if you know her, is not a word that issues frequently from her lips."

It's hard not to notice that the very family-minded, 36-year-old SJ, like six of her seven siblings, has no children. "The choices we've made in our careers haven't allowed it yet," she says, but it's clear that she's thinking about babies. "I'm watching her on this precipice, having this really crazy time before she starts a family," says Nicholson. For now, SJ works a minimum 90-hour week during the six-month shooting schedule for Sex; in her off-time, she's making movies or leading plays. "Her shooting schedule for an actor alone is enough to break the strongest man and make him cry," says Cynthia Nixon, Sex's Miranda and SJ's friend since the seventies. "And when you add the producer duties? I don't know how she does it." Frankel, who directed her in Miami Rhapsody, recalls that "the movie was shot for 30 days, and she worked eighteen hours a day for 29 of them. On the one day that her character wasn't called, she came to the set anyway and ran the slate for a couple of hours." And she still finds the time to befriend colleagues. "I feel that she is someone who gets who I am and accepts me for who I am," says Chris Noth, a real buddy.

And this is, of course, very Carrie: managing the art of friendship in defiance of time restraints. "The women on the show seem to be able to get together at least once a week for brunch and once in the evening," Nixon says. "Where do they find the time? If we had that time our lives would be so great." Nixon's first job with SJ was making a recording of Little House on the Prairie ("She played Laura and I played Mary"), and in many ways, the two are involved in an urban remake of that rural classic, with Cavalli replacing calico and Dolce & Gabbana standing in for Mrs. Hansen's store. Sex and the City could just as easily have been titled Little Apartment in the City, for its concerns and method are pure Laura Ingalls Wilder: four plucky women locked in an instructive struggle with a challenging environment. "Carrie actually has a moral compass; it's really important for her to be decent," says SJ.

But what happens when the challenges change overnight from how to catch a cab/fell a hunk/build a wardrobe to mass destruction and biological terrorism? "When 9/11 happened," says Michael Patrick King, the show's executive producer, "I thought, what do we do? Is the show over? Am I over? Then I went to dinner. I went shopping at Jeffrey. I kept on going even when I could smell the buildings burning. We want to live!" King—who seems more Carrie than Carrie—sees no real trouble ahead. "The show has always reflected the city, with a glossier or sadder edge. The season coming up will reflect the city as we know it, whether that's with a Dior gas mask or whatever."

It so happens that the show was heading toward darker days anyway. "This season," says Carolyn Strauss, who oversees Sex's creative content for HBO, "it had much more gravity—it had darker tones to it than it had in past years. Life has gotten immensely more complicated for those four girls, and inadvertently the template has been set for where they'll take the show next year." The prescience of the show is almost uncanny. "In August," says SJ, "we shot an episode called 'I Heart New York.' The narration at the end is so prophetic. It talks about how cities change and people come and go, how there's a new season and a new world, how the weather's changing, and it's cold." Spookily, in a couple of episodes SJ wore a gold pendant that stated in Arabic, god is great; and in a promo shot on August 12, she wore a stars and stripes bandanna tied around her head "ghetto style."

That Sex and the City has been pioneering about fashion has never been in question. This season, the new designers on Carrie's block are Valentino (for accessories) and Matthew Williamson (for rich-hippie tat). What makes Sex's costumer, Pat Field, so trendsetting is her commitment to not being snobbish: A little old lady creeps down the street in a Marni hat; Carrie has a picnic in a Tyrolean dirndl. ("Pat and I loved the Heidi dress," exclaims SJ, "but no one else did. I even keep a Polaroid of me wearing it by my bed.") "I don't come from a strict fashion point of view," says the cherry-haired costumer. "I like to mix in elements to make it more democratic. I want Carrie to relate to as many types of people as possible. She likes what I do because she's a very politically minded person. In a funny way," Field adds, "SJ is an unintentional supermodel. She's a woman who, like a lot of women out there, has attained her own good looks and style."

Off camera, SJ is currently wearing a red velvet jacket from Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche (the top half of a suit made for the Emmys), American Eagle jeans (tailored for her by the show's seamstress), a white shirt from J. Crew ("I bought it for everyone I know"), a pink pashmina (some girls just can't give up the goat), and green Wellington boots. "I want to dress like an English farmer," SJ says, "with sweaters instead of coats, and lots of corduroy." Laura Ingalls Wilder would approve, although she might find it hard to understand the 200-odd pairs of Manolos that SJ keeps "in circulation at any one time." The rest of her wardrobe has been Polaroided and locked away in Manhattan Mini-Storage for a rainy day—make that a rainy decade.

One November night, sitting in Circo after a performance of David Lindsay-Abaire's tragifarce Wonder of the World, in which she plays the lead role, it feels to SJ like the rainy days have arrived. It's two months after the attack, her survivor's adrenaline has worn off, and her Marc Jacobs corduroy coat has failed to revive her. "Matthew and I are not sleeping well," she says as she tiredly picks at a mixed salad with no mesclun ("I prefer a larger leaf"). "I can't believe it's affecting me in such a textbook way. I'm having horrible dreams. For the last three weeks, I've felt completely sad about it and very worried about New York. I just feel that there are very dark days ahead of us, and I don't know if any of us are prepared." She munches joylessly on a truffle pizza that has arrived with the compliments of the house, as has a bottle of wine with the compliments of fans at the bar. It makes you understand why Broderick and Parker like to eat in Queens and Chinatown, where they're less recognized and fussed over. "I don't have a doctorate in foreign policy," SJ continues, "but it seems to me that this war is all about the Middle East. Despite my feelings about Bush, this war is seemingly successful and the Dow is up, but, I don't know. … Maybe it's because we live close to it, but I just feel that there are 3,000 bodies there—you can smell it. I don't feel afraid, but what once seemed like alarmist behavior isn't: When I'm in the canyon between tall buildings, I keep thinking, Those people didn't have a chance. I always felt safe here. …"

Like every New Yorker, SJ is questioning everything. "I don't know what I'm doing with my life. To worry about reviews—it all seems so silly. It's a perspective that doesn't have an epiphany to it. It's much more long-term than that." Then she adds, in case anyone should get the wrong idea, "None of my family wants to leave the city. Not only that, I don't want to leave this city to go anywhere, not for a couple of days. If something happened and I couldn't get back. … I love this city. I love its flaws. On September 10 there was hope, and there will be again." Of course, SJ and Broderick have considered their exit possibilities. Broderick—who has lived in downtown NYC all his life—has a place in a fishing village in Ireland, and he has pointed out to her that they could always move there and live a life of cable-knit sweaters and selective gigs. "Financially, Matthew and I do not have to work as hard as we do," SJ says. "But I feel that I have a responsibility. I have seven brothers and sisters, and they're not Matthew's responsibilities, they're mine. That said," she muses with a smile, "I feel that I could learn to knit well enough to, I don't know, earn a living in Ireland."

In any event, Broderick is committed to The Producers until mid-March 2002. "Will I be happy when that's over? I'll be happy if he's happy," SJ says. She loves the vicarious emotions of the spouse. "The great thing about marriage is that I love when he's happiest. His victories might as well be mine. But the disappointment he feels might as well be mine, too. When I go see him in a play, I feel my most important job is to make him feel as good as possible, because the type of courage that's required to go onstage requires this kind of support. I said to him before he came to see this play I'm in, 'When you come tonight, I don't want any help. All I want is for you to say something really kind after it.' You just figure it out—it's like any working couple." Once, when the critics were less than kind, SJ was so hurt that she didn't dare go to the drugstore because the pharmacist would have seen the Times. Broderick said to her, "You have nothing to be ashamed of. Get on the subway and go to the theater."

When she tells this story, it suddenly strikes you: Who could be better equipped to lead New York through its darkest days than stubborn, show-must-go-on, I-will-survive thespians?

And sure enough, the day after Thanksgiving sees SJ a lot happier. She is at Jin Soon, a very new and very chic nail bar in the Village, having a manicure-pedicure. "I do my own nails," she says. "I have them done professionally only before awards shows, when someone else is paying." SJ confesses to being manic about foot maintenance. She scrubs her soles "eleven times a day" during filming, on account of Carrie's barefoot tendencies, and she owns all manner of Bliss utensils for this purpose. But today the treatments are on the house, and it's a wonderful way to read The New Yorker, as per the family obsession. (Seymour Hersh is like a Parker icon.) And, as happens when one's feet are surrounded by pebbles in a scented pool, SJ's thoughts turn to things pleasant. She rambles about how Matthew transformed her musical taste from show tunes to jazz (she's currently into Mingus Big Band) and how she made him watch Britney in concert on TV. (He left after 20 minutes with the words "I did good, didn't I?" She was left to wonder whether Britney is discovering a vocation as a stripper.) She has been reading an advance copy of her friend Alex Witchel's new book, and is looking forward to dinner with Bill and Hillary as a guest of her friend Richard Holbrooke. And she is very pleased to be carrying her denim-hued leather Birkin bag, which she splurged on while shopping in Vancouver with Kristin Davis, her Sex costar. "I couldn't bring myself to carry it for a year," she says.

It's this quality—the sense that, no matter how savvy and successful she may be, SJ willfully stays outside with her face pressed against the window—that is what's lovable and modern about her, and what emboldens her fans to believe that she is one of them. In Michael Patrick King's phrase, she is "the star next door." And since 9/11, there could be no better example than this "sexy, vulnerable, strong, funny" woman—Alec Baldwin's words—of how to be a celebrity in a chastened, determinedly glamorous, unstoppably industrious city.

Which is why, when SJ's done—toenails and fingernails buffed, not polished—she pulls on her Wellingtons and tramps out to catch the subway to the theater.

"Manhattan Rhapsody," by Sally Singer, has been edited for STYLE.com; the complete article appears in the February 2002 issue of Vogue.