- The 54-year-old author also defends The Carrie Diaries' poor ratings
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In a candid interview, Candace Bushnell has admitted she thinks Sarah Jessica Parker is too old to star in a third Sex and the City movie, as she defends The Carries Diaries' disappointing ratings.
The 54-year-old author, whose book Sex and the City was the basis for HBO's hit series and two subsequent blockbuster films, believes Michael Patrick King creations exhausted the actress' character, Carrie Bradshaw.
She told The Daily Beast: 'Look, Sarah Jessica Parker is 47. I think with the second movie, Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t be an ingenue anymore. But I think they were stuck doing what the audience wanted.
Too old for Carrie Bradshaw? Candace Bushnell (left), whose book Sex and the City was the basis for HBO's hit series and two films, believes Michael Patrick King creations exhausted Sarah Jessica Parker's character
'Realistically, a middle-aged woman who was married without children would be much more focused on her career and less focused on this Mr. Big: “Does he love me?†... “Does he still not love me?†I mean, I think it was coming to the end of what they could do with the character.'
The critically acclaimed author both dismissed the notion of a third movie, which Ms Parker said she was open to in 2011, and admitted she would have changed the plot entirely for the 2010-released second film - where Samantha, Charlotte, Miranda and Carrie jet off to Abu Dhabi for a holiday.
'If it were up to me,' Ms Bushnell said, 'the second movie would have been Carrie Bradshaw decides to run for mayor and Samantha helps her.
'It would get into some real issues of what happens when you’re part of a relationship and the woman is ambitious. What does that do to her relationship with Mr. Big? To me, that would be interesting. But they were not going to go there,' she said.
'In real life, it doesn’t seem realistic to me that character would be writing that column for 15 years. It doesn’t make sense! To me.
'But people love the character, and I think they felt they were doing the movies for fans, and they just wanted to give fans what they wanted. Or what they thought the fans wanted.'
She also discusses her firm belief that Carrie Bradshaw would never have ended up with Big in real life.
Sex and the City: Ms Bushnell's Nineties New York Observer column, Sex and the City, became the inspiration for her subsequent book, and the HBO television series
Romantic ideal: Ms Bushnell also discussed her firm belief that Carrie Bradshaw would never have ended up with Big in real life
'In real life, I don’t think women end up with that character, and if they do, they usually get divorced after a year,' she explained.
'He couldn’t commit. Here’s the thing. I think the character Carrie and Mr. Big, it became in the audiences’ mind a very romantic story.'
Carrie Bradshaw returned to television in January for a Sex and the City prequel set in 1984 - this time the character is 16-year-old virgin in high school - played by AnnaSophia Robb.
The Carrie Diaries, which was based on Ms Bushnell's 2010 young-adult novel of the same title, was expected to be a hit for the CW Network.
But with its first season almost over, The Carrie Diaries has seen disappointing ratings, with each episode drawing an average of 1.5million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Ms Bushnell, whose Nineties New York Observer column, Sex and the City, became the inspiration for her subsequent book, and the television series, hopes that it will be renewed for a second series.
'There’s so much that can happen,' she says. 'I love AnnaSophia. She just holds the screen. She’s a very cool girl in person. I think that comes through. That’s something that’s key to Carrie. Carrie has to be cool. And it’s funny.'
As for why it has so far recieved poor ratings, Ms Bushnell offered: 'The reality is, Monday night is an incredibly difficult night on TV. We were up against The Bachelor, which had the highest ratings it’s had in years.
The Carrie Diaries: Carrie Bradshaw returned to television in January for a Sex and the City prequel set in 1984 - this time the character is 16-year-old virgin in high school - played by AnnaSophia Robb
Ratings flop: The Carrie Diaries, which was based on Ms Bushnell's 2010 young-adult novel of the same title, was expected to be a hit for the CW Network
No second season? With its first season almost over, The Carrie Diaries has seen disappointing ratings, with each episode drawing an average of 1.5million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research
'Those kinds of reality shows are like a sporting event. People watch them live. But The Carrie Diaries has huge streaming numbers. I don’t know if they told you that.'
Ms Bushnell also touched on her original column for The New York Observer, which she says was about 'sexual mores, mating and dating rituals in the city, [and] cultural anthropology.'
She explained: 'It tapped into this idea of single women in their 30s. In the 1990s there was an explosion of single women. These were women who had come to the city in the 1980s, as part of “the working girl.†The ’80s was all about this idea that women could have it all.
'You could have a career, and you could have a husband, and you could have children. Then all of a sudden, you had the 1990s, you had all these women in their 30s who had the careers but had not managed to find a husband, and they were single. And there really was no model for how to live your life and even what this life was.
'It was a lifestyle where wome n were very reliant on girlfriends, and it was this idea that when you come to the city, you make a new family.
'That’s what Sex and the City was really about. And now, as time goes on, the idea of women delaying marriage, having careers, has become in a sense mainstream. So for young women, it’s a passage in their life that they relate to.'
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