SATC Creator Darren Star Says He Based Show on Carrie and Mr. Big

Apologies to Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, but Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big were the intended “spine” of Sex and the City, show creator Darren Star insists.

In conversation with Vulture published Wednesday, August 13, the mastermind behind hits like 90210, Melrose Place and Emily in Paris said that the series was centered around Mr. Big and Carrie all along.

“I wanted to do this single camera film half hour where there would be a continuing storyline,” Star told Vulture. “Her story with Mr. Big was something that would be arcing through the show.”

Despite fans’ loyalty to the quartet of women who ran the show, Star says it was the infamous relationship arc that he initially framed the show on.

“Everything the show is should be in the pilot,” he said. “How Carrie explores a question — ‘Can women have sex like men?’ — how the women all have different points of view and really express who they are through that discussion. And in the end, how Carrie meets Mr. Big.”

When the series landed on Netflix for the first time in April 2024 (20 years after the HBO show’s finale), a whole new audience was introduced to Carrie and the gang. With a new generation of viewers, the tides are turning against the once beloved couple. Still, Starr believes the storyline of “this unattainable man and [Carrie’s] yearning for love and relationship was something that was going to create the tension of the series”

Star, who felt a particular kinship with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie, felt that it was important that viewers see Carrie as an “antihero,” a side of her he was able to expose through her relationship with Mr. Big.

“[Carrie cheating on Aidan with Big] brought the show to another level,” said Star. “I really wanted to be able to love and hate her at the same time, see her make mistakes, understand her. It made the character way more complex.”

Though Star may have been rooting for Carrie and Big all along, he has called the series ending (in which Carrie and Big are married) a “betrayal of the show.” Nevertheless, he made sure to commend director Michael Patrick King, who took over after Star’s season 3 exit.

“Shows evolve and Carrie certainly evolved. But I always felt the show was never about a woman getting her man,” he said. “It was about how women can define themselves 100 percent, that they didn’t have to be defined by marriage. But if that were the ending, I’m not sure the audience would’ve loved it. The show had a real audience-pleasing ending.”