The Two Conditions Sarah Jessica Parker Had for Playing Carrie on Sex and the City

It’s nearly impossible to imagine anyone but Sarah Jessica Parker playing Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. But when Darren Star, the show’s creator, first approached Parker about the now-iconic role, she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it.

In an excerpt from the forthcoming book Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love obtained by Entertainment Weekly, author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong explains that two major changes had to be made to Carrie’s character before Parker would commit.

“She didn’t want Carrie to throw around the word ‘f—’ just because the show was on cable,” the book reads. “She hoped Carrie would be thoughtful about language, given her profession as a writer. No problem, Star told her. She had [another] concern: the sex part of Sex and the City. ‘I just don’t see that it’s important,’ she said of doing nudity. ‘But we should have that conversation.'”

Star, for his part, was apparently more than ready to abide by her wishes.

“Star assured her neither he nor HBO would require her to do anything she didn’t want to,” Armstrong writes. “‘If you want to wear a bra and roll around in bed with somebody, and that’s what makes you comfortable, then that’s what you shall do,’ Parker recalls Star saying.”