From The Archive: The 2003 Vogue Interview Where Sarah Jessica Parker Said “Goodbye” To Carrie Bradshaw

Parker herself, however, has rarely put a foot wrong. Take how she looked during her pregnancy. If Carrie had been pregnant, she would have seen it as an excuse to indulge in some themed dressing – earth-mother or hippie-mama. Parker quietly restricted herself to denim dungarees in private and, in public, some of the most exquisite empire-line evening dresses courtesy of Narciso Rodriguez.

Parker presents a much more polished, pristine version of herself than the one you see on screen. In the Tiffany diner in New York’s West Village (“I should have picked somewhere fancier”), Parker has her hair pulled back into a deliberately messy chignon, her lightly tanned skin giving off the softest sheen. Sarah Jessica doesn’t bear any traces of Carrie’s high-octane, neurotic Noo Yawk persona – quite the contrary: she seems quieter and more reflective.

After this, the sixth and final series of the show, Parker will be able to emerge from the character of Carrie. I don’t know what happens to Carrie, other than that there is going to be a new guest star who will turn her world upside-down. “I can’t believe that we’ve been able to keep it a secret,” she says. “God, his contract isn’t signed yet, and it’s killing me.” (I later discover it’s dancer-turned-actor Mikhail Baryshnikov who’s going to take her on a romantic pas de deux.)

As for Parker’s next moves, she’s not forthcoming. “I don’t really have a specific idea right now,” she says, “But I do know what I’m going to be doing in April, and what I’ll be doing in June. One thing will be similar to what I’m doing now; the other, completely different.” What she is sure of is that whoever she plays next has to look radically different from fashion-plate Carrie: “My next character has to buy her clothes from Gap, and it’s really important that she doesn’t have beautiful shoes.”

Still, even if she doesn’t reveal too much about what she’s going to do next, she’s certainly clear about why she’s leaving Sex and the City. Like so many other actresses now, Parker has sought to validate her roles by being heavily involved in the decision-making process that goes on off-screen. “Sometimes I worry that I’ve not explained clearly enough why I’m leaving,” she says, “and that it seems cavalier, but it’s my great affection for this job that has made me stop. I need critical praise. I need to come back every year and be better than the year before. I feel that if I went on for another year, this show would have to go in a direction that I’m not sure I want to go in. Maybe in three years’ time I’ll be like, ‘What? Was I crazy to walk away?’ Instead, I have to ask myself, ‘Can I be an actress for hire?’’’