Sarah Jessica Parker is back with a new comedy film, “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” The film, based on a novel of the same name, seems designed to show that Parker can branch out from her most iconic role. Of course we’re talking about Carrie Bradshaw, the ubiquitous heroine of “Sex and the City” and the role with which Parker is most closely identified.
According to Forbes Magazine, the 46-year-old SJP was named the highest paid actress in America along with Angelina Jolie. The mag estimated their earnings to be $30 million dollars each. Parker’s empire includes movies, television, perfumes, and fashion.
In “I Don’t Know How She Does It” Sarah Jessica stars as the harried Kate Reddy, a mom, wife, and financial analyst whose life is falling apart at the seams. The character created first by author Allison Pearson might best be described as the anti-Carrie. The film also co-stars Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan.
Sarah Jessica has been doing press for the movie while caring for her real life brood of 3 kids from her home in Manhattan. She is excited and thrilled to bring this story to the audience, sharing the ways that she relates — or doesn’t relate — to the character.
On Trying to Have It All
Sarah Jessica relates to this character much more than she does Carrie. SJP tells Leslie Bennetts in the September issue of Marie Claire Magazine the skinny when she reveals, “Kate’s life is very different from mine, but the inner workings rang so familiar for me. The great struggle to have it all, to be leading a rich, full life — how does one do that? There are choices, and there are consequences to those choices– and we all know how complicated that is.”
On Playing Carrie
Sarah Jessica found her happily ever after with hubby actor Matthew Broderick when she was still in her 20s. The iconic mostly 30-something single character of the hit, sexy HBO series struck a chord but there were differences. “Bradshaw’s life is nothing like mine,” Parker explained to Eva MacSweeny in the August issue of Vogue Magazine. She went on to point out, “I loved playing her, and it changed my life in lots of wonderful ways, but I’m not a crazy shoe lady, I don’t think about fashion all day long, although I have great respect for the industry. Every choice we’ve made has been different but with Kate I really understood the attempt at a life.”
On Being Scared to Fail
The former child actress still gets nervous. She told Vogue, “I lose my appetite. By Wednesday on the first week of ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It,’ I was sobbing, I was apologizing. I was feeling so awful and ashamed, like I had let the director down. If only they would not tell me when the camera was running I would be OK. I’m like that two weeks into every movie.”
Sarah Jessica Parker’s new movie, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” opens wide in theaters on September 16th. Check your local listings for times and locations. You may not get a Carrie fix but the reviews seem overwhelmingly positive and Kate Reddy is at least a physical doppelganger. Brava!
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