‘Sex and the City’ Creator Shares Which Plotlines Are From Her Life: ‘People Are Usually Surprised’
Written by admin on February 15, 2026
“Sex and the City” creator Candace Bushnell’s one-woman show covers her most well-known creation in very personal detail: In an interview with People published Saturday, Bushnell revealed which storylines from the popular HBO series were based on her life — and noted “people are usually surprised” by the answer.
“Originally, Carrie Bradshaw was basically me, and that’s one of the things that’s a big part of the show, it’s about ‘Sex and the City’, how I created ‘Sex and the City’, how hard I worked to get there and why I invented Carrie Bradshaw,” Bushnell said.
In the part of the stage show called “Real or Not Real,” Bushnell tells the audience just what came from her own life.
“The show is pretty ‘Sex and the City’–oriented. I talk about my Charlotte, my Samantha and my Miranda,” she explained. “Carrie Bradshaw is the character that was based on me, probably closer at the beginning of the series, and then it takes on a life of its own, which is fantastic because you want that to happen.”
“People are usually surprised by, in some ways, how the show mirrored my own life. Certainly at the beginning,” she also said. “Audiences aren’t so aware of that. I didn’t end up with my Mr. Big. I do tell that story about our breakup.”
Bushnell developed her one-woman show during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“But it just seemed absolutely impossible. It seemed impossible to write a play for somebody who had no connections; it just wasn’t gonna happen,” she told the outlet.
But she stuck with it, and has since performed the show around the world.
“I just kept doing it. I’ve done it three times at Café Carlyle. I’ve actually done it all over the world. I’ve done it twice at The London Palladium to a sold-out crowd,” she said. “There were things that were really surprising that at first, I didn’t even know what it was going to be.”
Read the interview with Candace Bushnell at People.
