Is the fairy tale over for the cast of Sex and the City?
News that Manhattan's Magnolia bakery - the kitschly cute cake shop made famous by Sex and the City - has been temporarily shut down by New York's Department of Health is the final insult in a month of cruel injuries to SATC devotees. With its idealised image of New York life, coupled with the dream that one could scoff down a dozen sugary cupcakes and still fit into one's size-zero Chanel couture, the Magnolia represented everything that was brilliant about the programme. Revelations of rodent droppings and fruit flies don't quite fit into the picture, and so one can't help wondering ... is the SATC dream over?
On the evidence of the past few weeks, the answer, heartbreakingly, is yes. The recent announcement that the show's four lead actors have finally agreed to make a movie together has not brought the cheer to us SATC aficionados that might have been expected. The allegations of ego-jostling about money and who will get top credit, particularly between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall, have made it rather difficult to watch the two of them on screen celebrating the importance of female friendship. Yes, I know they were always, like, acting, but this argument overlooks the deep emotional connection the programme inspired in its (possibly more romantically inclined) viewers.
Worse, this movie smacks of desperation on the part of the actresses - and desperation, as the show always emphasised, is never a good look.
None of the four has managed to swing a post-SATC solo career. Even Parker, who actually had a solo career before, has done nothing since other than demonstrate that she can't even name a perfume. First there was the hopefully monikered Lovely, and this month she launched the didactic-sounding Covet. Then there's her cut-price sportswear range (it just gets classier, doesn't it?) which goes by the frankly incomprehensible name of Bitten. Like, what? It was bad enough when Carrie's "happy" ending turned out to be with the tedious Mr Big; celebrity perfumes and rodent faeces truly prove the fairy tale is over.
