‘Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw Could Have Been Series Co-Stars Cynthia Nixon or Kristin Davis

And just like that, it’s been 25 years since the transformative television series Sex and the City first graced our TV screens, and its stars have been reflecting on their iconic roles, and what could have been.

Sarah Jessica Parker played the iconic role of group leader Carrie Bradshaw, a sassy journalist/”sex anthropologist” who writes about finding love in New York City in her own column in The New York Star.

The series, which led to two films and two spinoff shows — The Carrie Diaries (which follows a younger version of Bradshaw played by AnnaSophia Robb) and And Just Like That (inspired by Carrie’s signature phrase) — follows a friend group of four women who navigate life and love in New York City together. While fans have come to idolize SJP’s portrayal of Bradshaw, it turns out that some other familiar faces were also being considered for the role.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, two of SJP’s SATC fellow co-stars, Cynthia Nixon (who played Miranda Hobbes) and Kristin Davis ( who played Charlotte York), revealed that they were also asked to read for the role of Carrie Bradshaw.

Davis shared on the And Just Like That… The Writer’s Room podcast that the show’s creator, Darren Star, asked her to read for Carrie, but the role wasn’t exactly a perfect fit.

“(In) the original script, Carrie was much more like Candice and she smoked and she swore…and I was like, I can’t possibly [play Carrie],” she said, referring to Sex and the City author Candice Bushnell. “And I remember one line in the script it said, ‘Carrie has the body of Heather Locklear and the mind of Dorothy Parker.’ And I was like, ‘That is adorable, but I can’t play that part. Like, what [are] you thinking?’”

Davis felt strongly that she was destined to play Charlotte, the preppy art dealer originally from Connecticut. When convincing Star that she was meant for the role, she said, “I can’t even read for Carrie. I am this other girl who’s like underwritten but I understand her, OK. I need to be her.”

Nixon’s experience trying out for Carrie differed a bit: “I auditioned and they were like, ‘Yeah, not so much,’” she recalled.

Once she was rejected, she returned to audition for the role of Miranda, a lawyer whose cynicism often gets the best of her.

“It’s a show that shoots in New York. This never happens. There’s got to be one of those women I could play. Couldn’t they see me for somebody else?” she recalled thinking.

After some persistence from her agent, Nixon was offered the role, which ultimately helped Parker accept the role of Carrie. Executive producers helped lure her in by telling her, “You know we have Cynthia Nixon.”

The SATC films and spinoffs are now available to stream on Max.