Sarah Jessica Parker Has A Big Theory About ‘SATC’

I'm pretty sure just about any fan of Sex and the City out there is still able to voice their love about the six-season/two-movie series just as strongly now as they were able to back when it ended. However, when you ask one of the stars of the show, Sarah Jessica Parker, in addition to her love, she has a few other things to say about where it left each character's story. Specifically, Parker has a crazy theory about Sex and the City that just might change the way you look at the series.

As the show went into syndication after it ended in 2004 and multiple movie spin-offs were released, a number of fans came up with theories to explain the way the characters behave and the way fans respond to the characters. But not one of those theories is quite as crazy as Parker’s: in a recent interview on The Nerdist podcast, she admitted that she doesn’t even believe that Samantha, Charlotte, or Miranda are real.

Say what?

That’s right. Parker admitted to The Nerdist’s host, Chris Hardwick, that she “used to wonder if Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda were real.” For a while, she said, she had thought that they were “just [Carrie's] column.” But before you start picketing outside of Parker's New York City apartment, it seems as though the actress has put a good deal of thought into this: “They’re such perfectly archetypal characters.” For someone like Carrie, who is “writing a column about sexual politics and observations of female-male, primarily, heterosexual relationships," it would make sense that she would “pick one type… saying, ‘This type is this and this.’” Then, she added, “you complicate it more, like any good writer does. So I’m not entirely sure they are real … What we are seeing isn’t necessarily what happened in New York.”

I think this theory is fascinating — in fact, it's one that I myself have definitely considered before. This isn't even the first time it's been floating around: In a 2013 Salon post, writer Daniel D’Addoraio speculated the same thing, only more specifically about the final episode: “I believe that, even within the world of the show, nothing depicted actually happened. The show’s protagonist, the writer Carrie Bradshaw, wrote herself three best friends and an ultimately heroic lover. She is, finally, alone.”

It seems as though Parker isn’t the only one who has thought about these characters as a figment of Carrie’s imagination. But there are other theories about the show, too: More frivolous and fun ones, like the theory that links Sex and the City with 30 Rock and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit thanks to guest appearances by Dean Winters, the actor who played Brian Cassidy on the hit crime show, as well as Dennis Duffy in 30 Rock, and Carrie’s FWB John on Sex and the City.

It seems as though, with enough time, fans can come up with the craziest theories about Sex and the City. But Parker’s own theory, I’d say, might just be crazy enough to stand on its own two legs.