Host Alex Cooper asked Parker about returning to Carrie's world for And Just Like That..., which premiered in 2021, and wondered if the actress rewatched any SATC episodes to prepare.
"I've never seen most of it. I've never watched the show," Parker revealed. She said she watched it "in the beginning," and for a time she received dailies and rough cuts from the studio, but she "finally begged off." Producer and director Michael Patrick King would tell her, "You've gotta watch. You've got to give me notes. You've got to watch it."
But, Parker said, "I realized that I wasn't being helpful because it was so unpleasant for me to watch myself that I couldn't see the work, and that's not a good producing partner." She was "able to be a partner in lots of other ways," but by season 2, "I wasn't watching at all."
There's one exception, however. "I saw the final episode ever because Michael had a screening of it live, as it was happening live," she said of the season 6 series finale, titled "An American Girl in Paris (Part Deux)". She called the screening "incredible" and said it was the "only time" that she understood the cultural impact of the series, "because we had been so purposely cloistered from chatter."
She remembered that when she got home, she turned on CNN and saw on the news banner, "Carrie ends up with Big." "I was like, 'Do they know who Carrie is and do they know if they say Big, what that means?' " she said. "... I only then thought, 'Wow, that's making a big assumption that there's going to be people in the broader world that know who Carrie is.' "
Parker returned to the character for two movies, 2008's Sex and the City and 2010's Sex and the City 2, before And Just Like That... premiered.
As for actually returning in the new series, Parker said, "In theory, it felt really good. It was terrifying." The first table read was "so happy," but she was "really nervous" the first two or three weeks of the project, which she said is typical for her.
"Doesn't matter how many times I've played a part. You just start constantly like, 'Is this how I walk? Is this how I talk? Is this how she walks? Is this how she talks? Does she run this way? What feels right and correct now?' So, that's just the way I examine everything anyway," she said.
Parker also reflected to Cooper, 30, that Carrie is a "rule breaker," and because of her, "I came to look at rules different because I was somebody that always followed rules. . . . And Carrie didn't always, and there was a lot that came up that made her life better by being completely herself."