Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief Joanna Cole chatted up actor Sarah Jessica Parker for a candid conversation onstage at the Cannes Festival of Creativity. A style icon in her own right thanks to her Sex and the City role, Parker was dressed impeccably in a white Ralph Lauren dress topped by a dark blazer and complemented with hot pink Dior pumps. Under the blanket title of “Fashion, Sex, Celebrity & Character”, a wide range of topics were covered over the course of the talk, including social media, women in Hollywood and, of course, Sex and the City.
Unlike other celebrities who have taken naturally to Twitter, Parker admitted it was “complicated” to define the boundaries of her online interactions. Indeed, since joining the microblogging platform in 2011 (under the handle @SJP), Parker currently has 618, 000 followers. By comparison, the previous day’s speaker, X-Men star Sir Patrick Stewart, who joined Twitter in 2012, has 1.3 million. Cole concurred on the difficulty of maintaining a digital presence, stating that her online persona was just that: a persona, saying, “It is not necessarily me and I never do it when I’m drunk.”
Moving on to more serious subject matter, Cole pointed out that stars like Parker played an important role in positively representing in Hollywood productions, where, “Only 23% of dialogue in Hollywood movies is said by women.”
“In her character (of) Carrie Bradshaw, she (Parker) had created a thoroughly modern woman the likes of whom we hadn’t seen since Mary Tyler Moore,” said Cole. “I think Sex and the City changed the landscape for women on television and in Hollywood in two fantastic movies. I think Sarah Jessica was a huge part of that, it was brilliant casting, but she also produced it I think it personified her life too, actually, (portraying) the sort of very modern woman who looks like she’s got her shit together.”
For her part, Parker was modest, saying that any glass ceilings she was able to break through were due to the talents of the writers and the benefit of not being on a traditional television network, which was an even bigger deal when the show premiered in 1998 than it is today. Indeed, airing on HBO (a cable channel) allowed risks in language and tone that simply would not have been possible anywhere else (at the time).
Moving on from entertainment, the duo shifted to the notion of a modern work-life balance, with Parker expressing admiration for those women go above and beyond to provide for their families out of necessity.
“I don’t think that there is any balance for anybody,” said Cole. “And i don’t think you can try and plan. i mean, people get hit by illness, they get hit by all sorts of things like unemployment . Life comes at you at unexpected way and i also think there’s an ebb and flow to life, and you just have to sort of let it go and let God (take over) at some point. It is incredibly important to have friends, incredibly important to be social, incredibly important to try and get a walk in or do something kind of active, and incredibly important not to take all things seriously. God is up there laughing at us – he is bent double (laughing)!”
By Mikhail Lecaros
