Viewers “” have always been fascinated by the issue of Carrie Bradshaw’s finances. You don’t need to be very familiar with New York’s reality to see that Carrie didn’t earn enough for all those cosmically expensive dresses and shoes, going to the most popular bars in the city and other life pleasures. Even if her columns were advertised all over New York, she spent surprisingly little time at work. Busy with an intense life and experiencing all possible emotional catastrophes, she occasionally sat down at the computer keyboard and almost unconsciously spewed out text. Plus, she had an abusive relationship with her credit cards, and at one point she was almost homeless.
Carrie Brashaw spent more than she earned. Even the screenwriters argued over money
It’s no wonder that viewers have watched Carrie spend her money for years – who wouldn’t want to be able to afford such pleasures? Writer/producer Amy Harris told CNBC back in 2017: “The biggest argument we ever had between writers was over money.”
How much did Carrie Bradshaw earn? Here we must remember that Carrie’s on-screen life mirrors that of author Candance Bushnell, who wrote essays for the Observer before her lucrative deal with Vogue. In 2009, Glenna Goldis announced that the same weekly The New York Observer owed her $700 for two articles she wrote for the paper. So it’s safe to assume she was getting $350 a month for one.
Since the fictional New York Star newspaper is the serial equivalent of the Observer, it is easy to calculate that at the same rates for four articles a month, Carrie Bardshaw earned $ 1,400 a month. But in addition to the money she earned, Carrie also had access to credit cards, which she often exceeded.
Candace Bushnell, however, told The New Yorker in 2022 that when she wrote the “What People Are Talking About” column for Vogue, she was getting $5,000 a month for it. “Those were the times when writers signed contracts with ‘Vanity Fair’ for six texts and $ 250,000 a year” – let’s admit that her serial heroine did not have such a position.
Still, nothing is impossible on TV. For example, in the sixteenth episode of the fourth season, we learn that Carrie has spent $ 40,000 on shoes alone over the years. If we assume that she started collecting designer high heels in 1991, that means she spent $3,363 a year on shoes over the years ($303 a month).
Our heroine pays $ 700 a month for a cozy apartment in an attractive area, although similar apartments in the same area are rented for $ 1,700 – reports Stephanie Georgopulos from “”. Let us add that also in New York, prices on the real estate market jumped drastically: in December 2022, you had to pay USD 3,3995 for such premises (data from the Zumper website).
And yet branded clothing is not all of Carrie’s expenses – let’s not forget about more mundane purchases. Stephanie Georgopulos calculated in 2011 that Carrie smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a week. Assuming she had to pay $3.50 a pack in New York in 1998, Carrie was spending $49 a month on cigarettes alone.
Carrie’s favorite drink is Cosmopolitan. Georgopulos estimated that if one of these would cost around $11, and Bradshaw typically drank three of these in one sitting, then since the show’s characters went out at least once a week, that would cost $132 a month. And let’s not forget that the girls used to go to brunches together, which they paid for in turns – here we estimate that these brunches cost them $121 a month.
Carrie doesn’t like to use public transport very much, so she often used taxis in the series. Here, assuming that she used such services three times a week, the monthly cost would be $228. Let’s remember that if we assume that Carrie earned $1,200 a month, after paying for her apartment, she was left with $700 to live on.
The phenomenon of “Sex and the City”
“Sex and the City” revolutionized television: such a comedy series with strong female characters, told from their perspective, had simply not been on television before. People loved the four main characters because, while their New York biographies were largely made up and highly implausible, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda went through emotional dilemmas that equally affect all people without exception.
“I think one of the reasons audiences responded so vividly to our show is how personal it was and how it aligns with their experiences. And that’s because basically we all go through the same thing when we’re trying to figure out who to be single in a world where society tells you you’re basically a leper,” commented Michael Patrick King, co-writer and co-executive producer, for the show’s 20th anniversary.
HBO turned a social column written by New York columnist Candance Bushnell into a series that tarnished the existing TV formats of sex and love productions. In this series, the comedy has reached the shameless border of honesty, and the creators showed something that until then was rare on television: the female perspective. In her lyrics, Bushnell described her dates and interviewed other people about their sex lives and numerous failures in this regard. In the lyrics, she used her alter ego – Carrie Bradshaw. Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt were also inspired by real people whose adventures she described in her columns. When the contract for the series was signed, she got 60,000 for the copyright. dollars, Deadline reported.
Bushnell herself recalled: “When I wrote my column, the image of a 30-year-old single woman was a fresh concept. It was revolutionary in a way, because she was also a funny woman. When I read my columns from 1997, I realized that it was very much about then. “It’s about women’s sense of humor and women’s dirtyness. Today it seems quite common, but then it was new. There were no series about women. There was ‘Friends’, but it was something completely different,” she told Chris Barton back in 2018.
Bushnell wrote her series with Darren Star, who was previously behind such series as “Beverly Hills: 90210” and “Melrose Place”. In the idea for a series about sex and friendship from a female perspective, he saw an opportunity for more than just changing the narrative to a female one. “I really wanted to write a show that I would also like to watch and that I wouldn’t have to apologize for and remind myself that it’s just a show. I didn’t want to work on euphemisms. …) I thought it was going to be a show where you can say anything,” he reports to the LA Times.
The adventures of four liberated, but also emotionally a bit confused and canonically different 30-year-olds have become so deeply rooted in the television landscape that the creators still can’t say goodbye to their heroines. After the production of the series ended in 2004, two more more or less successful cinema films were made, and besides, a television continuation of this story has recently started. “And Just Like That” shows Carrie and co (no longer Samantha) trying to deal with new problems as women in their 50s. Although the popularity of the production does not match the original, two seasons have already been created.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
