She mastered the wit, the wardrobe and the walk — but Sarah Jessica Parker never expected to inherit the criticism too.
Parker, who plays the iconic columnist-turned-author in the series “Sex and the City,” and its revival “And Just Like That…,” figuratively slipped back into her Manolo Blahniks for Wednesday’s episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, hosted by Alex Cooper. There, she opened up about the not-so-kind commentary she received — and how it affected her.
“I really wasn’t prepared for public commentary, and that was really unpleasant at times,” Parker admitted.
Her gripe, she clarified, wasn’t with critiques of her work, but with the deeply personal digs that felt more like paper cuts to the soul than professional feedback. Her confidence, she said, was called into question “when you’re kind of filleted.”
It was the commentary about her physical appearance — the kind of things “she couldn’t change and never considered changing” — that lingered the longest.
“I didn’t feel like it was actually a conversation,” Parker said. “I didn’t feel like I could sit in a room and someone would say to me, ‘You’re really unattractive,’ and then I could say, ‘Wow. Well, first of all, that’s hard to hear. But second of all, why do you seem angry about it, or why do you feel it’s necessary to comment?’”
She recalled a moment when an unnamed publication published unflattering remarks about her appearance — an act she described as a “kick in the rubber parts.”
“Why is this a problem?” she asked. “Why is this deserving of your time and why do you seem to delight in saying it?”
In a moment of vulnerability, Parker shared that she called several of her male friends for counsel, eventually breaking down in tears — an emotional response she says was the result of an “accumulation of that kind of commentary.”
It was, she admitted, the only time criticism ever made her cry.