Sarah Jessica Parker has opened up about maintaining a strict no-nudity rule throughout her career.
The actor, 58, is best known for playing Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. While her co-stars in the hit comedy often stripped down for the show, Parker never did so and infamously had a no-nudity clause written into her contract.
Nudity has continued in spin-off show And Just Like That, with the season two opener seeing both Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon appearing naked. Parker, though, did not.
Appearing on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show on Wednesday (28 June), the Hocus Pocus star explained how her no-nudity policy came into place and has stayed enforced.
Discussing her first impressions of Sex and the City, she told Stern: “I thought the script was really interesting, and really exciting, and different, and fresh, and I’d never seen anything like that.
“The only thing I said to [creator Darren Star] that I was concerned about was that I just didn’t feel comfortable doing nudity, and I suspected that if it wasn’t in the pilot, it would be a part of a series.”
Parker explained that Star simply told her: “Don’t do it then, I don’t care. Don’t do nudity. We’ll have other actors, if they feel comfortable doing it they’ll do it, but you do not have to.”
She continued: “I think I was just shy. I just never felt comfortable exposing myself that way. I never had any judgments about anybody else doing it, it wasn’t like a morality thing. If somebody else felt comfortable doing it, I was admiring of them, but I just never felt comfortable being nude.”
Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘And Just Like That'— (Sky)
While she was never pressured to undress on Sex and the City, Parker has previously spoken about a situation where she was left in tears after producers insisted she appear on screen nude.
“I don’t know if I had confidence or if I was being counseled by people. There was so much pressure for me to take my clothes off,” she told People in a 2018 interview.
Recalling the time she was left “sobbing” after being told she had to strip off, she said: “They were like, ‘Sarah Jessica’s going to be nude tomorrow,’ and I was like ‘I’m not going to be nude.’”
You can read our recap of the latest episode of And Just Like That here.
And Just Like That airs Thursdays on Sky Showcase and Now in the UK, and Max in the US.
