In many ways, the second half of 2023 belonged to Sarah Jessica Parker. From the flurried excitement about the return of _And Just Like That_for its second season last June, to the forensic dissection of her every outfit (the impact of that Moncler mega-coat cannot be understated) to the sea of memes about Aidan Shaw’s unsightly undergarments (we couldn’t help but wonder, could enormous Y-fronts ever be sexy?) Parker and the girls got us all talking. A third season was confirmed and is due next year, but it isn’t about to be a year of rest and relaxation for SJP. In fact, she has now landed in London for the highly anticipated West End stint of her Broadway production of Plaza Suite, in which she co-stars with her real-life husband Matthew Broderick.
In it, Broderick, 61, and Parker, 58, play three different couples whose lives unravel in one hotel suite - it was described by one critic as ‘a referendum on modern marriage’. The New York show shattered box-office records during its 19-week run, becoming the third-highest grossing play revival in Broadway history. Now they will be hoping for a similarly rapturous response during their 10-week run at the Savoy Theatre, where they will be performing until the end of March.
Plaza Suite isn’t the first time the couple, who will have been married 27 years in May (they surprised their guests, who thought they were attending a party, with a wedding – and the bride wore a black Morgane Le Fay gown rather than white), have taken to the stage together. They first starred on Broadway together in a 1996 production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Back then, Parker praised the man who would go on to be her husband, saying, ‘He's probably the funniest fellow I've met in my whole life. He's so bright, so handsome, I think he's the most handsome man I've seen… And he inspires me. I'm mad for him, totally.’ Eighteen years and three children later, these words remain a rare insight into what makes the relationship - which has quietly become one of the longest standing in Hollywood - tick. In an interview last year, Parker said simply that she does not ‘make proclamations about my marriage. I don’t talk about my kids.’
While they have both had notable TV and film careers, it was their shared love of Broadway which first brought Broderick and Parker together when they were introduced by Parker’s brothers, who ran a New York theatre group in the early ’90s (Parker got her big break as Annie on Broadway in the ’70s). Parker’s ‘stage chops’ are part of what Broderick has said he loves about his wife. During the New York run of Plaza Suite, he said, ‘[She's] such a wonderful actor and a wonderful comedian, and people maybe aren't as aware of [that].’ He added, ‘I think it's a real pleasure to watch her and be reminded of how good she is at that.’
They have spent decades supporting one another’s careers. It is said to have been Broderick who urged Parker to take the role of Carrie in Sex And The City, which premiered in 1998, and she thanked him a few years later during her second Golden Globe acceptance speech, adding she was grateful for his ‘courage to let me work with the likes of Chris Noth and John Slattery and John Corbett’. And yet despite such success, their lives have, in Hollywood terms anyway, been something that resembles ‘normal’ to those looking in from the outside; indeed, SJP famously still takes the subway everywhere in New York and serves customers at her SJP Shoes outpost near her home. Living in the two townhouses in the West Village, which they bought and combined in 2016, is lavish in the city’s real estate terms, but the couple have intentionally sidestepped many of the trappings that come with the kind of fame they harness, appearing on few red carpets and conducting even fewer interviews over the years.
But there is very much a Brand Parker behind the scenes. As well as SJP Shoes there is winemaking, a line of Cosmopolitans (of course), a luggage line, and book publishing, under the SJP Lit imprint, with Zando, an independent publisher. And Parker’s return to Carrie, in And Just Like That, after an 11-year hiatus from the Sex And The City-verse, meant she has again shaped the TV watercooler conversation. While it got off to a wobbly start critically speaking, the show broke streaming records and fans couldn’t get enough. ‘The world of Carrie and her friends has always been about coming home, and I felt like we needed that right now,’ she told Vogue in 2021.
Now, Parker and Broderick will be returning to the passion that first brought them together but this time in less well trodden streets than their hometown of New York. Luckily for us, a new challenge is, thankfully, something SJP does not seem to ever shy away from.