While Carrie Bradshaw still looms large in popular culture, Parker insists that her new character, Frances, could not be further removed from her previous lovelorn heroine – which is thanks in large part to Horgan’s writing.
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12 years after “Sex and the City” left the air, Sarah Jessica Parker is returning to HBO for a new comedy, “Divorce”, written by “Catastrophe” co-creator Sharon Horgan, who executive produces with Paul Simms. The actress, who appeared at the Television Critics Association gathering in Beverly Hills Saturday to talk about the show, said clothing is a part of the story but not in the way we were all obsessed with way back when. Horgan’s scripts track the couple as they go through the various phases of ending a marriage, from counseling to mediation and beyond. “You’re not in the experience alone, the exercise is so brutal, it can either be made better by the other person or much worse”.
“The reason that I was so interested in this landscape”, Parker said, “is because there’s so much to say about this period in a life, this attempt at divorce”. “The children kind of represent a bit of a centrifuge. As you’re fragmenting, they’re there in the middle to keep you together”, he said. “Somebody who was so tired in ways that I had not seen or had a chance to play, and used language in a way I hadn’t ever and had a relationship with a man and children in a way I’d never had a chance to do”. “It’s much more subtle, but you see it in everything”.
Parker described their first meeting as “a blind date” set up by HBO. But she soon discovers that making a clean break and a fresh start is harder than she thought. There “was a moment we had to know what she saw in him and what he saw in her”, Parker said. I love the process, the schedule, the speed, the urgency, how important every detail is, how little time you have to sort it out and try to get it right.
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Parker shared about what she, also as a happily married woman, became aware of in regards to divorced individuals. “I think Frances was so much her own person from the moment I read the pilot, she was so distinct from not only Carrie but any character I’ve ever played”.
