{"id":42706,"date":"2021-12-08T20:54:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T20:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=42706"},"modified":"2021-12-09T20:55:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T20:55:01","slug":"candace-bushnell-real-carrie-bradshaw","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/candace-bushnell-real-carrie-bradshaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching Up With Candace Bushnell\u2014a.k.a The Real Carrie Bradshaw"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The opening night celebration of the New York City Ballet at David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center on November 25, 2008 in New York City. (photo: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Sex and the City”<\/a> began as a newspaper column by Candace Bushnell, an insider\u2019s view on the dating and mating habits of thirty-somethings in the Big Apple<\/a>. (She created Carrie Bradshaw as her alter ego so her conservative parents wouldn\u2019t read about her sex life.) In 1996, Candace\u2019s columns were published as the book Sex and the City<\/em><\/a>, and that\u2019s when Beverly Hills, 90210<\/em> and Melrose Place<\/em> executive producer Darren Star came knocking. On June 6, 1998, HBO aired the pilot.<\/p>\n

Your latest book, Is There Still Sex in the City<\/em>?, just came out. What\u2019s it about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s about dating again after not dating for a while. So many of my friends were all of a sudden single. You get married, you have kids, you kind of do it all right, but then something happens \u2026 for half the people it doesn\u2019t work out. A lot of women who get divorced are in their 50s, and they\u2019re trying to find who they are again, not in the context of marriage and kids. Things get shaken up and everything\u2019s up for grabs, and the book is about navigating that passage.<\/p>\n

How is dating after divorce?<\/strong><\/p>\n

After I got divorced, everyone is like, \u201cOh you\u2019re going to start dating again in six months.\u201d Well, you do that, and it\u2019s a nightmare! You\u2019ll make every rookie mistake because you probably haven\u2019t dated in 15 or 20 years. You haven\u2019t had to think about taking your clothes off in front of a stranger, and now you do. It\u2019s terrible!<\/p>\n

How do you think the dating landscape has changed for better or for worse since the advent of Tinder and other dating apps?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wrote a Tinder story in the book and I found it depressing. Because people do see that there\u2019s a commodification of the person and that just feels like it\u2019s bad for the soul, you know? We\u2019re more than the boxes that we tick off, and people find it frustrating to live in that space. Now do people have great success with online things? Yes, they do, but it also seems to be very demoralizing.<\/p>\n

What have you found to be the most successful way to meet men?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The old-fashioned way, through friends. And one of the advantages that people have of being this age is that they know how to do analog dating. They did it really, really well in the \u201980s, before technology, when people picked up the phone, when they knew how to do that human connection thing. Most of them know how to go on a date and have a conversation.<\/p>\n

How involved were you with adapting Sex and the City<\/em> for the TV series?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the pilot, which was done a year before the series came out, I read all the scripts, I went to some castings and went to all the sets. It was very exciting. They asked, \u201cWhat do you think of Sarah Jessica Parker?\u201d and I said I think she\u2019s great. Darren [Star] says great, we\u2019re going to go and meet her. So Darren and I went to see Sarah Jessica Parker in Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway. We went backstage and she was so cute. And we went and had a cosmo!<\/p>\n

Was this your first foray into television?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interestingly, at the same time I had a show on VH1 called Sex, Success and Sensibility<\/em> that was adapted from my columns. It was me and this other guy. We\u2019d go report on polygamist couples and even went to a sex dungeon! It was weird, but interesting and fun. I just thought, \u201cThis is so cool. I have two TV shows coming on!\u201d They were so super small at that point, but it was a great moment for me.<\/p>\n

Did you get to participate on set?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I got yelled at for being a backseat director. I didn\u2019t know that kind of thing could happen, but it can! I think Darren got yelled at too and then we both had to stand by the sound person. We did have a good time. I was there for every single scene they shot in the pilot. We were in Soho at six in the morning for the scene where Carrie comes out of the nightclub and sees Big in his car.<\/p>\n

How similar was your experience with your own Mr. Big?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAbsof**kinglutely\u201d is directly what my Mr. Big said to me. Darren was really smart to pick that conversation out of the book. It\u2019s kind of a turning point for Carrie\u2019s life, like, whoa, she\u2019s never been in love and she\u2019s like, \u201cF**k, what does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

How close were the episodes to your real life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a lot of moments, but of course they were a little different. A lot of the first two seasons came from the book and directly from my life. Like \u201cValley of the Twenty-something Guys,\u201d where Carrie\u2019s staying at a younger guy\u2019s apartment and there\u2019s no toilet paper and then he comes down and talks about his crazy dream. That came from this guy who I interviewed for the column, who dreamed about having huge hands and being in an elevator called the Killavator. It was hilarious. I would just look at some of these guys and think, \u201cYou are so nutso.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26633,"featured_media":42707,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[],"yoast_head":"\nCatching Up With Candace Bushnell\u2014a.k.a The Real Carrie Bradshaw<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Candace Bushnell, the author of the original Sex and the City columns, dishes about her latest book, the real Mr. Big, and her favorite New York City haunts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/candace-bushnell-real-carrie-bradshaw\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catching Up With Candace Bushnell\u2014a.k.a The Real Carrie Bradshaw\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" 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