On July 9th, Candace Bushnell will bring her one-woman onstage memoir, True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, to the Westport Country Playhouse. Candace is, of course, the creator of Sex and the City, the column-turned-book that became the iconic TV series. Westport Lifestyle chatted with Candace—a Connecticut native!— about what audiences can expect from this wholly original evening of theater.
Westport Lifestyle: You've told your story in so many formats—in your columns, in books. What made you want to bring it to life on stage?
Candace Bushnell: I met someone who had done a one-man show, and he said, ‘I think you can do a one-woman show.’ I just said yes. I wrote something, and then it took off. We got a Broadway director, we developed it at the Bucks County Playhouse, and then I did it off-Broadway. It had a great response, and I’ve done it all around the world. I’m still doing it four years later. It was one of those things that just worked out.
WL: What is it like to perform your story, after writing about it for so many years?
CB: It's fantastic to interact with a live audience. There's something very different about performing—a little bit goes a long way. There are things that need more explanation in a book, but little actions on stage are, somehow, magnified. And when you write a book, you don’t get any reactions for a year. But people come up to me after the show, and they love it. They find the show inspiring. It's great to get an immediate reaction.
WL: Your love of fashion is legendary. How did you decide what to wear on stage?
CB: I always wear the same dress by PatBo, because it works. I have to move around the stage. I have to slide off a couch. I have to lie down.
WL: What do you hope audiences take away from the performance?
CB: My message: be your own Mr. Big, as opposed to being married to Mr. Big. It's a feminist message about being an independent woman not relying on a man, and the realities and the struggles of that.
WL: Speaking of Mr. Big, in the And Just Like That reboot, we see that Carrie and Big were married, for quite a long time. Is there anything about this Carrie you still relate to?
CB: The character was my alter ego, so I would say that there's a lot that I relate to. But the show's been on TV, in some form or another, for close to 30 years, and you want the people who are working on the show to make it their own and bring their own experiences. What works in a TV show is not the same as what works in real life. People love to catch up with those characters, and people feel like those characters are like their friends. They really relate, and that is just fantastic.
WL: What about doing your show brings you the most joy?
CB: Being on stage and getting the reaction of the audience. It's really fun. It's the origin story of Sex and the City combined with my story of how I first came to New York and how I made it. People dress up, they bring their girlfriends, they have a couple of cosmos, and they have a great time.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tickets for True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City start at $65, at westportplayhouse.org