Sarah Jessica Parker Doesn’t Try to Remake Men: “The only things I’ve tried to change is the perfunctory stuff. I mean maybe it’s just that I’m old enough now to know you can’t change somebody and you shouldn’t try. I think when you’re young you think, ‘There are all these qualities that are so likeable about this person and then there’s this thing.’ And if somebody said, believe me, there has been a battery of women that have tried to change that guy and it’s like, ‘But I’m different. I have the strength of 50 men.’ And then of course you realize over time that those fundamental qualities are who they are, they’re grown-up people. You can try to get someone to pick up their dirty socks. You can keep pounding that because that you might somehow get in there somewhere.
Parker said she’s not sure if she ever changed just for a particular man. She’s been in a relationship with Matthew Broderick so long it’s hard for her to remember her dating days. “…The things I think, hopefully, that you learn from one another that you like…it’s hard to explain. There are colors I would never have put together if it weren’t for Matthew. Like his mother was a painter and he has a different eye for color. I never liked parmesan cheese. And now I love it. I never liked pesto. There were just certain things I didn’t like and then I let him influence me.”
On Working with Matthew McConaughey: Is he really the ‘Sexiest Man Alive?’ Parker laughed, “I wish I had known that at the time [we were filming]. No, just kidding. Is he really the sexiest man alive? According to many men and women, he is. He’s very attractive. You’d be very hard pressed to deny certain qualities about him.”
Was there anything about McConaughey that took her by surprise? “You know what surprised me is he writes a lot. I didn’t know he was a writer. He writes a lot. He really works on the script a lot. He really thinks about it. He breaks it down. I guess that was surprising is that he was really into talking about it and working on it, and taking it apart and putting it back together. I probably would have - if you’d given me truth serum before the rehearsal process - probably thought it comes pretty easy to him, which it does at the same time. And he probably gets a script, you know, but no, he was much more interested in fixing and doing things to it that he felt were important for the story.”
Sarah Jessica Parker on Getting Physical in “Failure to Launch:” “Guess what I have to say about paint ball? I don’t care for it at all. It was fine. I just don’t care for it at all and it really doesn’t hurt at all. But it was very hot when we were shooting that and I was wearing a wig in the film and a helmet and a black jumpsuit in New Orleans in 100 degree humidity. It took a number of days to shoot so I don’t ever need to do it again.
The sailing was great. Matthew is a pretty accomplished competent sailor. He went out the day before and practiced. I was like, ‘I don’t need to practice?’ He’s an athlete. I think he enjoys being in charge. He has kind of old-fashioned ideas about that.”
Making the Transition from TV Success Back to the Big Screen: “I’m loving it. I mean, it’s terrifying every single time. It’s much more comfortable to walk onto a set of people you know and environments you’re really familiar with and places where you feel like you’re part of the conversation and collaboration, but it’s thrilling simultaneously to be terrified. It’s thrilling to be challenged. It’s thrilling to feel like the standards around you are very high, to feel like you’re constantly working with really first rate actors who have spent the last seven years of their life making movies. It’s wonderful to be around it and have these kind of choices. It’s been thrilling.
By the way, not a day goes by that I don’t miss ‘Sex and the City’ but I think it’s a real privilege to feel nostalgic about that experience. To have left it the way we did, to have loved it so much and to have been able to walk away at the time that we wanted to is a real privilege, so I feel really fortunate.”
