Sarah Jessica Parker was the subject of some unwanted headlines over the past few weeks after saying she reads two books a day.
While speculation of her reading capabilities circulates, the actress continues the challenging mountain of novels she has to get through in order to be a judge for the Booker Prize.
The actress is part of a panel of judges for the literary award which announces the “Booker Dozen” of 12 or 13 books on 29 July, its shortlist on 23 September and the overall winner on 10 November. The winner receives £50,000.
“I have one by my side now,” Sarah Jessica tells Sky News during an interview for her show And Just Like That.
“It’s been hard these last two weeks because we’ve been promoting the show and I thought I would be able to read between interviews, but you can read two words. You can read these three sentences, so I’m feeling very anxious about how many books I have yet to read for our next deliberation,” she says.
The Sex And The City actress compares the workload to preparing to take an exam.
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“I’ve not ever felt this behind, including in high school. Like, I really am not entirely sure how I’m going to read the required amount of books by our next deliberation,” she says.
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“I thought about this last night in bed, that even if I stay up every day and don’t sleep, I might not make it. So I’m not sure how. I have to not make dinner for anybody, not do anybody’s laundry. I have cut out all tasks. So we’ll see. It’s pretty fantastic, this burden is pretty wonderful.”
Turning to her spin-off series, she says she never paid much attention to the cultural impact Sex And The City had on portraying women in their 30s on screen without a rose-tinted lens.
“I think we’re just always wanting to tell interesting stories,” she says.
“And the rule in the writing room has been, for as long as I’ve known, the story can only be as far removed as one person from the writer, so every single story told has either happened to a writer or to a friend or family member or colleague of the writer.”
She says what makes it real is that the show deals with real moments that happen to women as they age, from children flying the nest to navigating the dating pool.
“You don’t flat line at 50 or 60. People are living pretty colourful, interesting, exciting lives and they have influence and authority. They’re trying new things. They’re leaving marriages. They’re saying goodbye to kids. They’re starting new jobs, they’re leaving jobs, and they’re getting married, they are widows, there’s just endless amounts to talk about and it should be,” she says.
‘It is insane there aren’t more shows like us’
Her co-star Kristin Davis agrees and states her main hope for returning was to break certain taboos for women now in their 50s.
“It is insane that there aren’t more shows like us, you know? I’m hoping that there will be,” she says. “It’s very interesting that somehow women, especially at a certain age, you’re just supposed to just vanish. I don’t know where we’re supposed to be and that just makes no sense.”
Sex And The City was ‘incredibly white’, says Cynthia Nixon
For Cynthia Nixon, playing Miranda now as a lesbian character allowed the show to explore the challenges that face people coming out later in life and navigating the world they find themselves in.
She says although Sex And The City broke taboos for white women in their 30s, she felt the original iteration of their show wasn’t as reflective of the real world as it could have been.
“The one thing that didn’t really sit well with me in the past was how incredibly white the show was,” she says. “So, I think to expand the universe of, you know, who gets to be centred in the show has been a tremendous boon. Whether you’re talking about people of colour, whether you’re talk about queer people, people of different ages. We used to have a wonderfully fascinating lens, but it was fairly narrow.
“We’ve moved in our view of queer people… for so long, if you wanted to put a gay person on screen, one of the ways to make them palatable was to really emphasise their funniness and I think we have many very funny gay characters, but we’re able to, I think, have a more well-rounded view of them.”
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And Just Like That is available on Sky and NOW.
