For six seasons, Carrie Bradshaw chased after commitment while wearing Manolos and writing her weekly column. Ironically, at the beginning of "Sex and the City," it was Sarah Jessica Parker who hemmed and hawed over signing the dotted line. The 60-year-old actor spoke about her early hesitation during a two-part appearance in the "Are You a Charlotte?" podcast, hosted by longtime "Sex and the City" co-star Kristin Davis. Speaking to Davis, Parker explained why she "panicked" at the idea of "committing" to the series, even after she shot the show's pilot, which first aired in 1998. As Parker explained it, the experience of filming the show's first episode was "lovely," but she "forgot all about it" until one day, she was walking down a street in New York City when she ran into a well-known producer who complimented her on the show. "Then I went on with my day, and when the show was picked up, I panicked," she recalled. "I was like, I can’t be on a TV show. I don’t think I'm suited for that life." Prior to "Sex and the City," Parker had made a name for herself, having starred in "Square Pegs," "A Year in the Life," and "Equal Justice," the latter of which was the only one to make it two seasons. Parker explained that the brief length of each series afforded her a chance to "bounce around" and appear in other films and work with experienced actors and directors. "Then I moved on and I would do a play or I'd do some readings and then I'd do a part in a movie," she explained. "I really thought, like that is the goal, like the journeyman is the goal." "The idea of a television series meant that I couldn’t do all those things ... and that I would get in the same car every day, and it just kind of felt like somebody was, you know, putting their hand over my mouth or something," she explained, adding that she eventually called up her agent. "I talked to my agents and I said, 'You know, hey, can you get me out of this?'" she recalled before noting that, eventually, she learned that because HBO was still relatively new and an "unknown species" to many, she had the benefit of flexibility. Eventually, she was encouraged to try it out for just a year. “And I never looked back,” she said. “I was never not happy to be there. There was no place I would rather have been than on our set.”
