May 14, 2003 (June 2003 Issue)

Sarah Jessica Parker

With Sex and the City winding down, America's giddiest fashion maven has a new life to look forward to - which means kicking off her Manolos, passing up those lovable-neurotic roles and concentrating on being a mom.

By Merle Ginsberg, W

Boys, boobs and bags.

Two weeks into the sixth and final season of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker is jabbering about the show's three Bs every bit as passionately as her single-girl alter ego, Carrie Bradshaw, does on TV.

But this is no idle chatter. Parker, like her character, has a new love interest this season. It's her six-month-old son, James Wilkie Broderick, whose breast-feeding is a new favorite conversation topic for Manhattan's hottest mama. And the bag, you ask? It's not the run-of-the-mill, French country diaper dispenser draped across the arms of so many of New York's weary working moms. When Parker arrives for breakfast one morning at New York's Regency Hotel, she hauls in the giant-size, multicolored, much-coveted Louis Vuitton Murakami bag, packed with baby paraphernalia and distended almost beyond recognition.

"Of course I have it," she says with a laugh, acknowledging her natural evolution into a fashionista—though not, she swears, a fashionista on a par with Carrie Bradshaw. This morning, Parker wears a black smock top ("A.P.C.," she admits—who can resist prying into her labels?), cutoff seersucker jeans and sky-high fuchsia croc stilettos (last year's Christmas Manolos from her husband, Matthew Broderick). "I'm not going to be precious with this bag, though," she continues. "Pat Field [the show's costumer] told me to burn it—to run it into the ground. I mean, can you wear it after this season?"Like the trendiest bags, Sex and the City is facing its expiration date, which puts Parker in a hugely transitional place. After five years on one of the biggest shows of the era, about the trials and tribulations of Manhattan women on the prowl, she is something like New York royalty—a woman whom the power crowd at the Regency stands up to acknowledge; a woman whom passersby regularly stop for advice about sex and dating. But in February 2004, when the last of the season's 20 episodes will air (they begin June 22), Parker says goodbye to all that.

"The Boy," as she and Broderick refer to their son, has made this transition a natural one. He shows up on set every day with his nanny so that Parker can feed him and monitor his word development. ("I swear he said, 'Ba-ba-ba,' and it sounded just like 'Bowel movement,'" she says.) Nor is she shy about breast-feeding in the trenches—going so far as to lift up her shirt in a recent meeting with HBO executives in Los Angeles.

"I thought their jaws would drop," says Parker's co-star Kristin Davis. "But they got used to it. For Sarah Jessica, who's not a prude but is most certainly a lady, breast-feeding her child is the most wonderful thing. I don't think it takes away from her sexiness. It makes her sexier."

The paparazzi seem to agree. Despite having lived in downtown Manhattan for years, she and her husband have been besieged by the press only since July, when Broderick and a very pregnant Parker moved into their West Village town house. "Photographers rented apartments across the street and next door. We were followed every place we went," Parker says. "We've never had security, staff—we don't live like that. Matthew and I had to ride in separate cars, run through buildings. If we threw them off in cars, they'd jump onto bikes and chase us. Not a day has gone by since July when there haven't been at least two photographers at my house."

Over breakfast, fans stop by every few minutes—all of them "obsessed" with Sex and the City—and nothing in Parker's wholesome demeanor discourages them. Maybe the fact that she has been an actress since age eight—and grew up fairly broke in Cincinnati with seven siblings—has helped make her one of the friendliest, most patient stars on the planet. "No one can actually believe she's that nice," says Sex and the City executive producer/writer Michael Patrick King. "But she actually is that nice." Parker does have her limits, however; when she takes her baby into the ladies' room at the Regency and a woman whips out a camera and begins snapping mother and child at the sink, she looks up with alarm in her eyes and says, "Please don't take pictures of my baby."

Back at the table, Parker acknowledges that life could be worse. "How can I complain?" she asks. "I could be in Baghdad. But the photo thing is not fun. I'd be lying if I said that every time I leave the house now, I don't think, How much energy do I have to care about how awful I look? Or, Do I have to cover the baby and get the carrot off his clothes? But right now, I care more about my life than about the pictures, which is why there are so many lousy ones out there."

The next afternoon on the Sex set, Parker is looking distinctly photo-ready, dressed in a peach floral satin-and-rhinestone cocktail dress (Betsey Johnson) and snaky high-heeled sandals (Miu Miu), with her hair bobby-pinned to one side.

"We all know Carrie's allowance for clothing is unrealistic," she says, laughing. "She spends all her money on clothes and shoes. Hey, I'm as guilty of it as anybody. A YSL skirt can make you feel happy in these troubled times. And of course she—like me—borrows half her clothes and gets discounts on the rest. Fashion is fantasy. It's pretend and make-believe. But you feel like no one outside of New York and L.A. realizes the artifice—just how fake it is."

Though Parker is the rare celebrity who has resisted the Botox needle, she adds that even when the clothes come off, her appearance is the stuff of luxury. "I wish that when someone said to me, 'Look how you lost weight after your pregnancy,' I could tell them, 'Yeah, but I can afford a yoga teacher to come to my house. I can afford child care so I can work out for an hour and a half,'" she says. "I understand that as a culture, we cling to this idea that celebrities look exciting. But not only is the standard too high for most normal women, it's too high even for us."

Parker, her lips glossed to perfection, is waiting for actor Ron Livingston to show up and make out with her as if his life—or at least his career—depended on it. It's become something of a Sex and the City tradition not to part with any information about the season's upcoming plotlines, but Parker does acknowledge that men are back in a big way on the series this year. In that spirit, the Cosmo has been replaced by a brand new cocktail, the Absolut Hunk (made with vanilla vodka, cream and a cherry). And Parker giggles about the return of Mr. Big, Chris Noth's notorious character: "New York can be a very small city," she explains, Carrie-like.

It's going to seem smaller without Sex and the City, a larger-than-life show that has sold a million Manolos, tossed terms like "funky spunk" into the vernacular and, alongside The Sopranos, made HBO the decade's hippest network. So why end the fun? "This is New York," says King with a smile. "You've got to leave the party while the party's still going."

"It's wise to get out now," Parker agrees, "though I have no ability to telescope how sad I'll be when it's over. I love these people so much. But the characters are all at a certain age when they must reach an epiphany. These people would split up; their lives would change." Persistent rumors cite bickering among the female cast members as a possible cause for the show's demise; industry insiders have singled out a frosty attitude from Parker toward co-star Kim Cattrall. "It hurts me so much when I read that," Parker counters. "Kim is a friend, but the rumors don't stop—and how true did the rumors of my breakup with Matthew turn out to be?"

Livingston arrives, and after five short takes he and Parker, who kiss more and more passionately each time, are finally interrupted by the loud moaning of another boy—the Boy—who isn't pleased to see Mommy in the arms of another man, especially during his lunchtime.

Playing a character whose mind lingers giddily in the gutter most of the time might seem antithetical to Parker's new job as a mom. But the discrepancy has been a factor all along. Parker, after all, is a real-life good girl; with the exception of a few famous dates with JFK Jr., her romantic life has consisted of two long relationships (the other was a seven-year romance with Robert Downey Jr.), and her friends all say that she barely even curses. "Good God" is her idea of an expletive, and an occasional "freakin'" sneaks by, too.

"Her sensibility is definitely not the same as Carrie's," says Darren Starr, who hired her when he originated the series in 1998. "She's much more ladylike. It took her a while to accept that she'd be playing this bawdy character, and she was very clear from the start that the word 'f---' was only to be used on important occasions."

When the scene wraps and another round of breast-feeding begins, conversation turns to the subject of Parker's post-Sex career options. "I'll probably do some movies," she ponders. "And a play. I'll do what I always did before." She's signed on for a big-budget film—she won't say what—that starts production in July 2004, and then there's an indie in early rounds of financing that would shoot in March. "I don't have a lot of interest in playing 'Girl in Manhattan With Great Wardrobe Who's a Flawed but Winning Person,'" she says. "It would serve me better to play an engineer in Kansas. But the window isn't open very long. I'm 38. Hopefully that's changing because of people like Julianne Moore." (Moore is one of Parker's favorite actresses and is about to start shooting Marie and Bruce, adapted from the Wallace Shawn play, alongside Broderick.)

Parker also has the option to keep executive-producing television shows—one of the hats she's worn at Sex and the City and something she'd love to continue to do because she's discovered she's good at it. "The reason I love it," she says, "is because I'm so controlling! Horribly controlling. I'm even a little bossy. I mean, I pride myself on treating people well, but I have very high standards. Our show is all about details: You wear the wrong lip liner and people in New York say, 'That's not what that girl would wear.' I like having a say in things. That's why it's so hard to take other jobs during the breaks. On them, I have to keep my mouth shut."

Two days later at the Luxe Photo Studio on West 18th Street, Broderick arrives a little bedraggled after driving from Providence, Rhode Island, where he just wrapped a movie. He walks in to hug his wife and hold his baby and is stunned to find Parker done up for a photo shoot in a Roxie Hart–style flapper dress made of chain mail. "All you said was that you were working," he mutters, then ducks out the door.

"I'm happy he's home," Parker says, "but I'm also happy when he's working, which is why it's so great that his next movie is in New York. I know he feels good when he's acting. He's an actor—a real actor. He can sing. He can dance. He's like a song-and-dance man from another time. He does what's interesting and engaging and isn't concerned with what looks sexy to someone else."

Speaking of looking sexy, Parker notes with some alarm that the baby hardly seems to recognize his mother with her cleavage popping out of the corseted dress. "The show has definitely changed my style," she says. "I think I would have been far more conservative than I am—and I'm far more conservative than the character. The flashy stuff would make me feel like I'm making a spectacle of myself, and Matthew doesn't like it. But that's one of the fun things about doing the show. Same with kissing somebody new. Fidelity has to be honored—I'm under contract. But there are worse things I could be doing than kissing Chris Noth or John Corbett."

She whips past the Boy, half asleep in his carriage, and can't resist turning to coo. "I can't wait to have the Girl," she confesses. "As soon as possible. I've been saving all my things for her. Everything: crazy Judith Leiber handbags, Manolos—every single pair. I learned early on that if a designer gave me something and it said 'Kate Moss' in the waistband, I should keep it. And if it's a boy, I'll give it to his girlfriend?if he's heterosexual."

But Parker has decided not to get pregnant again until Sex and the City finishes shooting, since Carrie, after all, isn't exactly the mothering kind.

"People keep telling me she has to end the show married," Parker says. "Why? What if contentment is something else for her? Maybe it's a wonderful fella she's not married to. Or maybe it's alone. I don't know," Parker says, and turns to the Boy to give him a tickle. "I wouldn't know."

"Sarah Jessica Parker," by Merle Ginsberg, has been edited for Style.com. The complete article appears in the June 2003 issue of W.