"It was an image I just didn't want in my head," she says. Until, shortly after midnight on a street in Greenwich Village, with cameras rolling and crowds watching, she could delay no longer. "Michael asked me, 'Are you ready to see it?' And I said, 'Yes.' " Minutes later Parker took her last steps (on the small screen, that is; reports have surfaced that a movie is in the works, and Parker herself will not rule out a reunion at some point) as the woman in whose stilettos she has been walking for so long. A clue to the conclusion? Don't blink. "It's an enormous moment," says Parker, "and it's a tiny thing."
In the six years since Carrie first strode through Manhattan in a tutu and tank top, all smarts, sass and – thanks to a passing bus – street-water-spattered vulnerability, the show has won five Emmys and eight Golden Globes – including the best-comedy-actress statue Parker picked up on Jan. 25 (her fourth). Along the way, City has gone from quirky cable sitcom to cultural icon, helping to chart a brave new course for feminism, friendship, fashion and, of course, fooling around. In Saudi Arabia, as one Princess Hassan recently told Parker, some women use City to teach their guys about relationships. Jokes the star: "We're a public service announcement."
Fans, no doubt, will miss their weekly brunch with the girls: Parker, Cynthia Nixon (Miranda), Kristin Davis (Charlotte) and Kim Cattrall (Samantha). Still, no one can take the hit series' end as hard as the woman who, with equal parts conviction and anguish, pulled the plug on it. "You don't want to be the last one to leave a party," says Parker, 38, who has balanced her role as the show's star and one of its executive producers with her life as the wife of actor Matthew Broderick, 41, and the mother of their 16-month-old son, James Wilkie. "If we stay because it's comfortable and lucrative . . . it's a sad ending if you stay too long." In the end, she says, both she and King agreed "it was time to stop telling these particular stories at this moment in time."
JOSH & FERGIE: ROCKED BY SCANDAL
Did he cheat with a stripper?
Married less than a year, the couple denies an Atlanta woman’s claims that she and Josh had a fling
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