Don’t ask me if there’s still sex in the city, but there’s certainly still Sex and the City. On Dec. 9, And Just Like That…—the less-white, Samantha-free sequel to the six-season-long HBO series and subsequent films that spawned generations of SATC fans and made Manolo Blahnik a household name—premieres on HBO Max.
So it’s no coincidence that Is There Still Sex in the City?—the one-woman show by Candace Bushnell, who wrote the New York Observer column that started the whole phenomenon—is opening off-Broadway just two days before AJLT debuts. For months Instagram has been scrutinizing paparazzi pics from the set of And Just Like That…—identifying every article of designer clothing the stylish stars are wearing, from Kristin Davis’ flouncy floral Erdem frock to Cynthia Nixon’s chic made-in-Detroit Shinola leather Runwell backpack to Sarah Jessica Parker’s sky-high strappy sandals by the likes of YSL and Roger Vivier. Bushnell would be foolish not to capitalize on the SATC mania.
That’s exactly why the audience is at the Daryl Roth Theatre. A joke about The Bell Jar lands with an almost audible thud, but a quick mention of “my gay best friend, Stanford Blatch”—played by the beloved Willie Garson, who died in late September—elicits a sincere “aww.” So let the Sex talk commence! “Tonight, I’m going to tell you how I wrote Sex and the City, how hard I worked to get there, why I invented Carrie Bradshaw and what happened to me afterward,” Bushnell promises. And she stays true to her word—even revealing which memorable bits of the TV show were truth (the senator she dated) and which were fiction (the senator’s love of, ahem, water sports).
Of course, she didn’t get off the Greyhound—“wearing an outfit my mother bought me at the discount designer store, Loehmann’s”—and immediately find success with Sex and the City. Like so many of the rest of us, she toiled for years in the trenches at women’s magazines, writing low-paying articles about man-pleasing meals and multiple orgasms. She hustled to get all those shoes displayed like art on Anna Louizos’ ultra-glam set—which, she confesses, “are actually mine. And it’s embarrassing. Because people always ask me how many pairs of shoes I have. I don’t know—more than twenty, but less than Imelda Marcos?” (Side note: She could make a mint for BC/EFA by selling pics on that stunning set. People would absolutely pay a few hundred bucks to clink glasses with Candace on the candy-pink velvet sofa.)
Through the 90-minute show—cheekily directed by Lorin Latarro (who, between Mrs. Doubtfire, The Visitor, and Waitress, must be New York’s busiest choreographer)—Bushnell dishes on her post-SATC career highs (landing on the New York Times bestseller list with her books Four Blondes, Lipstick Jungle, The Carrie Diaries, and One Fifth Avenue) and lows (her two-years-in-the-making novel Killing Monica, of which she says “The reviews are so bad, even my agent wonders how I’m able to withstand it”), but ultimately, like SATC, this is a show about love, friends, and relationships. It’s a little rocky—remember, Bushnell is a writer, not a performer, so her delivery can be forced (though that should ease as the run progresses)—but your Sex-obsessed girlfriends will love it all the same. Especially with a cosmo in hand. And yes, they sell them at the bar.
Is There Still Sex in the City? opened Dec. 7, 2021, at the Daryl Roth Theatre and has closed. Tickets and information: istherestillsexinthecity.com
