Candace Bushnell Was There First

Every few years, someone declares the Cosmo is back: Eater in 2015, Vogue in 2017, food and beverage site Vinepair 2021, Harper’s Bazaar in 2022. And now, once again, the ultra-feminine Y2K cocktail has boomeranged back into our feeds and onto our drink menus, making the rounds thanks to Gen Zers who are discovering Sex and the City in droves on Netflix and TikTok. The woman whose column inspired the iconic TV show — unleashing a tidal wave of pink libations in the late ’90s and early 2000s — however, has moved on.

When Candace Bushnell and I meet for drinks, she surprises me by ordering Champagne, apparently her new go-to. We’re at Maxime’s, a new members-only club a few blocks from her apartment on the Upper East Side. The space occupies a townhouse drenched in color and fireplaces and velvet furniture and fringed lampshades and oil paintings of dogs, like an upper-crust British country house after several martinis. The many gallery walls are exponentially more gallery than wall. There’s a no-photos policy, and even the young receptionist seems exhilarated by Candace’s presence.

The awe is well-deserved. Through her alter ego Carrie Bradshaw, Candace reframed the image of the single urban woman by depicting that kind of life as something fabulous — envy-inducing, even — rather than unfortunate. After she reached the pinnacle of success as a columnist, she published an anthology and seven novels. Not one to sit still, she later created an autobiographical one-woman show — the next performance is Jan. 14 in New York — and also has plans for a memoir. Beginning on Oct. 20, she’ll appear on E!’s new reality show, The Golden Life, alongside the original Real Housewives of New York.

Through every chapter, she’s remained Candace to her core: glamorous, candid, and wryly funny. “I don’t really feel like I reinvent myself,” she says. “I just do my stuff and don’t worry about it that much.” Sometimes, that means she’s ahead of the curve; other times, the curve keeps circling until it finds her again — and again, and again, and again.

In person, Candace is almost unbearably elegant. She has buttery blond hair, bright blue eyes, and serene confidence. She’s quieter than you might expect, though she speaks in witty quips that wouldn’t be out of place in, well, a Sarah Jessica Parker voiceover. Discussing the half-finished manuscripts she’s abandoned, she says, “They don’t have enough steam to keep going, and then I just throw them out. The same goes for men. If it doesn’t work, you throw it out.”

Her introduction to the Cosmo came via Literary Brat Packer Bret Easton Ellis in the late ’80s or early ’90s. “Not that many people knew about it then. He said, ‘Oh, there’s this new drink, you have to have it.’ We started drinking them all the time and we were really adamant that it had to be made with fresh lime juice. It could not be Rose’s lime juice,” she says. (The other elements: vodka, cranberry juice, Cointreau.)

She mentioned the drink in her column, and then to her friend Darren Star, who wrote and directed Sex and the City. From there, presto — Carrie Bradshaw and her cosmopolitan friends elevated the beverage from a New York cocktail lounge staple to a global phenomenon.

Candace still revisits her signature drink, but only occasionally. “I’m getting older, so if I have one, I’m like, I have to go home,” she says. (Based on photos, my boyfriend guessed she was 51 or 52. She’s 67.)

Instead, she’s returning to a staple from her twenties: the humble vodka-cran, another drink that finds itself pervading the culture once again: In June, Olivia Rodrigo released a song called “expectations,” which includes the Bradshaw-esque lyric, “Rocking a minidress with a vodka-cran and an open heart.” Candace says, “I’m happy, I read something that said they’re back. Hopefully, the cranberry juice will prevent urinary tract infections.”

Ever the trend-setter, Candace was ahead of the vodka-cran’s resurgence, too. Last year, three months before Conan Gray dropped his single “Vodka Cranberry,” I saw her bypass a craft cocktail menu in favor of the tart classic at a movie premiere, which she invited me to after I spoke to her for Bustle.

The after-party was at Monsieur, Baz Luhrmann’s medieval-punk lair of a bar, and despite the crowd of TikTokers in barrel jeans, I felt like I’d fallen into the late ‘90s, right onto the set of SATC: Candace ran into an old photographer friend who used to snap paparazzi pics of Princess Diana, then asked me to fact-check a rumor she’d heard about millennial men’s dating habit. For a moment, the past and present seemed to be happening at once.

Now at Maxime’s, my personal sliver of the space-time continuum collapses again — this time, back to 2010. Candace clocks my shoes, Miu Miu’s five-inch Mary Jane platforms in daisy-print satin, which I stumbled across at a vintage store a few days before I turned 30 (don’t get me started on the V word). I handed over my credit card immediately. I finally had big-girl money and I wanted to spend it delighting my inner 17-year-old, who had salivated over the shoes as a high school junior.

My other obsession that year was Sex and the City. Looking fondly at my shoes, Candace says, “I had two pairs just like that. I gave them away, but I miss them.” I wasn’t wearing her exact cast-offs (same size, different colors). But the circular nature of it all had the same magical “only in New York” charm that’s always imbued Candace’s work. Even the bossa nova that’s been playing in the background sounds like the HBO show’s iconic theme song.

What’s old often becomes new again, though never in precisely the same way. The Cosmo was niche, then glamorous, then embarrassingly retro, and now constantly predicted to be making a comeback, this time as an ironic wink to a bygone era. “I like when a generation ahead looks back and says, ‘Hey, you know what? These things are really great,’” Candace says.

But certain things never change — at least, she’d prefer if they didn’t. After we finish our drinks, she says, “I have to go meet Darren Star.” His sister, the painter Connie Star, is showing her art at the Waldorf-Astoria.

She slips on a perfectly tailored Susanna Chow black leather trench coat and picks up her burgundy Prada purse. She steps into a taxi and offers to drop me at a nearby subway station. I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — one whole stop from Manhattan — which might as well be Mars. Inside, the screen lights up with a TikTok, an ad for a state Senate candidate. “What?” she gasps, covering her face in horror. “I remember when they used to play NY1!” Candace jabs the TV off, and we zoom down Park Avenue.

On relationships with rich, successful men:

It’s very different being with a famous person than being a famous person yourself. You definitely want to be the famous person.

You could stay with that famous person, maybe marry them, and then other famous men would want to go out with you because that’s the way men are. And then maybe you would be a hostess and have parties in a Park Avenue apartment, but you might hate your husband, and maybe you would cheat, and then you would be pulling out your hair extensions.

On getting older:

One of the great things about being in your 60s is that you spent the last 60 years figuring out who you are. In my 20s, every single guy I dated, I would change myself to be what I thought they wanted. If they played golf, I took up golf. If he was a nice Jewish doctor, I learned Hebrew.

That’s one of the things they always used to tell women to do — fit into the man’s life. If he likes the air conditioning on at night, you freeze. He always had to be numero uno. But then you get to a certain age and become more solid in who you are. You can be a little less flexible.

On passion:

When I was 18, I went to acting school. Everybody else felt like if they didn’t act, they were going to die. My feeling was if I didn’t act, I’d be just fine. I’d just go for a walk. And I realized that I felt that way about writing.

At 32, I had no money and I’d written a couple of magazine articles and had gotten kill fees. You could put all the work in, and editors don’t have to buy it, which really saps your confidence. And then I decided I have to make it. If I have to get up at 6 a.m. and work all the time, I’ll do it. It’s either give up or tough it out.

On the Real Housewives:

I did a radio show, Sex, Success, & Sensibility, from 2007 to 2008. It was three hours. Everybody thinks that they can talk — no, you cannot talk live for three hours. I had the Real Housewives of Orange County on, and I just remember they were all really tall and had enormous breasts. We hugged and my head was just squished in between.

I just filmed The Golden Life with Sonja Morgan, Dorinda Medley, Kelly Bensimon, Luann de Lesseps, and Ramona Singer. Reality TV is harder than anybody thinks. You look at it and think, Oh, it’s whatever. No. These women have been doing it for at least 15 years and I was like, I have no clue what to do.

All of the women on that show work really hard. If an opportunity comes up, they don’t say no. They say yes.

On Gen Z rediscovering SATC:

It’s great. Especially if you go to college, where you have all these new roommates. What’s one thing you can do together to bond? Everybody can watch Sex and the City and discuss it.

On her legacy:

People come up to me and say things like, “Sex and the City made me look at life in a different way.” I feel I gave women a new message and I’m so happy about that.

If you have kids, there’s a pattern for your life: You live in one place, and your friends are going to be the parents of your children’s friends. If you’re single and don’t have kids, you have to figure out your own pattern, and it takes visibility for people to realize, “Oh, my life could look like that, too.” Otherwise, a lot of people are on autopilot.

On singlehood:

I don’t feel like I’ve had a lot of bad relationships. All of these guys were perfectly nice, except for maybe a couple, but I just didn’t want to do the relationship thing after a while.

I find it so interesting that romance novels are so big now, because at the same time, it feels like women are really questioning heterosexual relationships. The landscape is changing, and the future is single. It is.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.