The ‘Real Carrie Bradshaw’ Comes to Budapest

In her new one-woman show, New York icon Candace Bushnell, the international best-selling novelist and creator of ‘Sex and the City’ takes the audience on whirlwind tour of New York City, from Studio 54 to the Lipstick Jungle and beyond, sharing her remarkable stories of fashion, literature and sex while pouring cosmos in Manolos. She will present her new one-woman show in March this year at the Erkel Theater in Budapest. During the performance, “the real Carrie Bradshaw” takes the audience on a captivating journey, sharing the most significant moments of her life and inspiring stories that have touched millions of women worldwide. This unique show, infused with honesty and humor, reveals what life is really like behind the fame as Bushnell, in her unparalleled style, reflects on her career, female friendships, modern love, and what it means to be an independent woman today.

All good ideas have a starting point. As to where she originates ‘Sex and the City’ from, Candace Bushnell tell Diplomacy&Trade that “Sex and the City was the continuation of all the work I’d been doing since I first arrived in New York City and began being published at 19. I was always a big observer of the relations between men and women, and so I was always writing about that in the 1980s, using my friends as subjects. The story of how I ended up writing ‘Sex and the City’ is one of the big stories that I tell in my one-woman show.’

TV show and real life
Candace Bushnell has come to be called in the press as the "real Carrie Bradshaw". However, she is not willing to reveal to Diplomacy&Trade how much (and what sort of) truth there is in that characterization. Instead, she states that “Again, you’ll have to come to the show to find out! I answer all those questions, including whether or not I have a shoe obsession like Carrie Bradshaw. We also play a game called ‘Real or Not Real’, because a lot of what happened in the TV show happened in my real life, but it’s better or worse.”
When asked about who – or at least what sort of women – are behind the other characters like Samantha, Miranda or Charlotte, her answer is that “originally, the women were all different kinds of women who I knew in New York City. On the tv show, those women became four types of women because you can’t have more than four or six main characters on a TV show.”
During the show on stage, Candace Bushnell also talks about what it feels like to be a famous, renowned person. However, although, many would definitely be interested to know, she does not talk about how much the success of the series ‘Sex and the City’ has changed your life. Why? “To be honest, ‘Sex and the City’ didn’t change my life. I live in the same neighborhood that I lived in before I was writing ‘Sex and the City’, and I pretty much have the same friends, including my Samantha!”

International relevance
This March, the stage show will be presented in Budapest to the (mainly) Hungarian audience. One issue that they are eager to learn is how much the "true tales" the author tells are of international relevance rather than just American.
“People are people no matter where you go. When I first started writing ‘Sex and the City’, I tried to write about situations that I thought could only happen in New York. It turned out that these situations happened everywhere! ‘Sex and the City’ is known all over the world, so, apparently, these are of international relevance."

Bushnell’s onstage memoir proceeds at a quick clip. When she emerged from puberty flat-chested, her father said soberly, “I’m afraid no man is ever going to love you.” (“Thanks, Dad.”) She climbed off the bus to Manhattan in a Loehmann’s outfit picked out by her mother, hoping to write her way to a Pulitzer. She landed her first byline with a wry piece on how to behave at Studio 54. (“If someone dies, ignore them.”) She met her Mr. Big, and then he dumped her just as she published the book ‘Sex and the City’, in 1996, which would upend how readers, and later viewers, thought about women and sex.

A life-changing series
The show is not for "women only." As for what she has to offer for the male part of the audience, Candace Bushnell highlights that “men have always loved the column ‘Sex and the City’ because it was honest about what men are really like! It’s the same thing with my one-woman show. They appreciate it.”
In many countries, the matters she talks about in the show may be considered issues in the taboo category. One may wonder whether one of the aims of the TV series – and of such theater presentations as the one coming up in the Hungarian capital is – to change that societal attitude.
“My biggest topic is how important it is for women to make their own money, be independent from men, make their own choices about their bodies and to become their own Mr. Big. I don’t think these topics are taboo. So many women have told me that ‘Sex and the City’ changed their life because it gave them a new way to think about their lives and what they wanted. These issues are very much on point right now as more and more women are realizing that centering a man in their life is very often not the best choice for them,” she concludes.