American actress Sarah Jessica Parker spends a lot of time thinking about others. Some of those people are fictional, some are real. But it’s always been a fixation of hers, she says. And it's what's guiding her forward.
“As a human being, what’s most interesting about the world is other people. And the more unfamiliar, the more interesting,” Parker tells The National.
This is what brought Parker to Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea International Film Festival, as she explores a part of the world wholly unfamiliar to her. She’s spent a lot of the recent days speaking with Saudi actress and filmmaker Fatima Al Banawi as the two prepared for an in conversation session on stage at the event.
"I think she’s very smart and ambitious and so, so interesting,” says Parker. “I just really enjoy talking with her.”
Parker, 59, hasn’t had much time to explore different corners of the world of late. She’s spent the past seven months thinking about the people that populate the world of her fictional counterpart Carrie Bradshaw as they filmed the third season of And Just Like That..., a continuation of her ever-popular HBO series Sex and the City.
Now that her head is above water again, she’s put her nose back where it’s most comfortable – nestled in a book, nearly at all times.
“I’m incapable of living a life without a book. The fact that I didn’t bring a book today is something I thought long and hard about. But I really thought it would look rude to walk into an in conversation and have a book nearby,” says Parker.
“It will look like I’m not interested in being here, or I’m antisocial. But I’m never without reading. Even on set, the second they yell cut I reach into my bag and pull out a book.”
For the next year, her reading list will be at least 170 books, as she has just joined the Booker Prize jury, which she’s thrilled but also a bit overwhelmed by.
“It’s massively, wonderfully daunting. It’s terrifying. But it’s going to be so exciting. I think the first parcel is going to be there when I get back home,” Parker says.
But she’s thinking most not about how this affects her, but how it affects others.
“Being a writer is a lonely endeavour,” says Parker, who publishes books under her imprint SJP Lit. “Some people work on novels for 10 years, sometimes 20 years, and then you offer it to the world, and then have people have opinions and judgments. I’m particular sensitive to that.”
Because she’s so attuned to the viewpoints of others, especially as “social media has connected us in ways that are really incredible,” she says, the hardest part at times is listening her own voice. But after two seasons of And Just Like That..., a show that is constantly the subject of discussion and speculation, that has been the most important lesson she’s had to learn.
“There’s a delicate dance that goes on between an audience, producers and a writer’s room. And there’s lessons you learn, but you have to be very disciplined about not applying them,” says Parker.
“You mustn’t write to the audience’s feelings, because you get caught up in results, and that’s just boring. It’s important to listen to your audience, because that’s the only reason you’re doing it, but you can’t take in all their thoughts and feelings and emotions, because they’re so scattered and radically different.”
Parker compares it to the sorts of blockbuster films that come out that seemed designed by committee, where a bunch of people come together to create something perfectly honed to a particular demographic after consulting focus groups and tests and scores.
“Audiences are too smart for that. They want real. Even if they’re mad, they still want you to have the courage of your own convictions. We need to be very careful not to try to make them happy.”
Season three of the ongoing HBO series, which will premiere on OSN in the region next year, has already been the subject of rampant speculation. Photographs of the cast on set have leaked online, and fans have poured over every detail to try to surmise what will happen next. For those wondering, Parker has seen most if not all of it. And she loves to see it.
“We spend a lot of time in production hearing from fans, because of social media and paparazzi. They keep telling us what we’re doing. ‘Oh my gosh, she’s wearing that. That means this! And what’s he doing here?’ They’re just projecting onto us, which we delight in. It’s so much fun. It touches us so much," she says.
“But we have to do what we’re going to do. We have to know that they’ve already told us what’s making them mad, but we’re deep into a story. So we have to learn discipline – respect for them, and discipline for the story and for the people you’ve hired to do it really well.”
