Girl talk on television isn't anything new. Mary and Rhoda did it. Laverne and Shirley did it. Kate and Allie did it. But none of those gal pals ever did it quite like the ladies-who-brunch on HBO's Sex and the City. When these four Manhattan friends get together, they're trading stories about male genitalia, sex toys and threesomes. Shocking? Perhaps. But this year the show's salacious dish—and the city-girl-next-door appeal of its lead actress,
Sarah Jessica Parker—has transformed the three-year-old series into a bona fide phenomenon, influencing what hip, unattached women drink (cosmopolitans), how they accessorize (with Fendi baguettes and gold chain belts) and how they view the dating game (consider the TIME magazine cover in August featuring Parker and her costars Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon next to the headline "Who Needs a Husband?"). Darren Star, the show's creator, credits Parker—who plays Carrie Bradshaw, the neurotic, lovelorn relationship columnist at the sitcom's center—for turning Sex into must-see cable TV. "Sarah Jessica has the biting wit I wanted the character to have, but she is also extremely sympathetic," says Star. "You really need the right person to make an imperfect character likable."
Parker, 35, is thrilled by the show's success and her reportedly more than $100,000 per episode paycheck. "What has happened in the past year is extraordinary," she recently told The New York Times. "There is not a day that passes that I am not grateful for the windfall." But she makes it clear that she and Carrie have little in common. The actress refuses to do nude scenes, doesn't curse and has been married since 1997 to actor Matthew Broderick, 38. "I don't think I could live the way she lives," Parker said to the Los Angeles Times in June. "But I am very admiring of her in a lot of ways. I have grown to care for her." As have critics, who this year awarded Parker the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy series. From the podium a stunned Parker protested to the crowd, "I'm not a winner." She couldn't have been more wrong.
