23 surprising things you probably didn't know about 'Sex and the City'

The "Sex and the City" book, similar to one of the plotlines in the television series, was made up of Bushnell's New York Observer columns, which ran between 1994 and 1996.

Bushnell wrote about her own dating life in New York City, and she interviewed other people about their own sex lives and misadventures. In the columns, she referred to herself as her alter ego, Carrie Bradshaw.

When an agreement was made between show creator Darren Star and Bushnell, the author was paid $100,000 for the screen rights to "Sex and the City," she told The Sunday Times in February. She will also not receive royalties from Netflix, where viewers can now stream the show.

"All of these men who are in charge of things, they just keep moving these cards around to make money because every time they move the cards around somebody's skimming," she told the Times. "The way men do business is a Ponzi scheme."

Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones, and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt were all inspired by real-life people who appeared in the original "Sex and the City" columns.

Mr. Big was also inspired by real-life publishing executive Ron Galotti, whom Bushnell dated for a year after they met at a party in 1995.

"He was one of those New York guys with a big personality—you just notice him as soon as he walks in the room," Bushnell told New York Magazine in 2004. "I called him Mr. Big because he was like a big man on campus."

One of the reasons some of the scenarios the four main characters find themselves in feel so real is because they were. According to Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, the author of "Sex and the City and Us," the female writers' "personal problems ... often came up in the writing process."

"The talks among them all in the writers' room became group therapy. Suddenly, being single had transformed from a liability to an asset," Armstrong wrote. "Every bad date turned into good story fodder. Unfortunate romantic liaisons no longer disheartened the writers; they couldn't wait to get to the office the next morning to talk them out."

"The writers had a really intimate relationship with each other," Armstrong told Business Insider. "At another show, it might not be so personal as it was here. They loved when they would fight or get in little disagreements about a topic, because they would use some of that when they were writing the brunch scenes."

When Parker first received the script she was hesitant — she didn't "see herself in Carrie Bradshaw or any of Carrie's friends," according to "Sex and the City and Us," and was unsure about committing to a TV series out of fear it would put her movie and theater career in jeopardy.

However, she was reeled in after meeting with show creator and executive producer Darren Star, who was open to her input on the character and even offered her the opportunity to produce the show.

When she read the script for the final scene of the pilot, in which Mr. Big asks Carrie if she's ever been in love, Parker knew the series could have legs.

Cattrall felt she was "over the hill" to play the publicist as she was about 10 years older than her costars. The actor was also nervous about the opportunities playing such a character would offer, since she'd played similar sexed-up characters in the past.

However, she soon agreed after meeting with Star and learning that Sarah Jessica Parker had already signed on to the project, according to "Sex and the City and Us."

While Star was attempting to woo Sarah Jessica Parker into the series, he sent the script to Kristin Davis, who was trying to transition her acting career to comedy, and asked her to read for the role of Carrie.

However, according to Armstrong's book, Davis was turned off by the description of Carrie, which described her as having "the body of Heather Locklear and the mind of Dorothy Parker."

"All Davis could think was, 'I am never in a million years going to have the body of Heather Locklear ... Carrie's fantastic, but I'm Charlotte.'"

After convincing her agents she was right for the secondary role, Davis landed her preferred role of Charlotte York.

According to "Sex and the City and Us," Davis was told that Charlotte might be a recurring character and appear in some, but not all, episodes. However, as the show went on, the writers and creators realized Charlotte was needed as one of the main four.

"For me, it was important that the hair color, body types, and everything was different," Star told MTV, according to Elle. "When Cynthia Nixon came in to read for the first time, she was blonde. I saw Miranda as a redhead. Thankfully, I took that leap of faith that she would look good as a redhead."

The fictitious newspaper name was created as an homage to Darren Star, who is credited with creating and producing the show.

In the series, Carrie's apartment is located on the Upper East Side on 73rd Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. However, the exterior of the apartment is actually located in the West Village on Perry Street.

The inside of Carrie's apartment was filmed on a sound stage. However, fans of the show can visit the brownstone's steps — which are blocked off since people actually live there — and take photos in front of them.

While filming the scene where she and Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, fall into the boating pond in Central Park, Parker cut her foot. As a safety precaution, she had to get a tetanus shot as soon as they got out of the water, according to Grazia.

In one of the final scenes of the series, Mr. Big's real name is revealed to be John. However, executive producer Michael Patrick King later recalled he came up with the name on the fly.

"In the last episode, in the last moment, I realized [I had] to say Mr. Big's name and I just [mimes typing on a keyboard] 'John,'" King told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. "And then I told all the writers and they were like, 'What the hell?' And I was like, 'We have to say his name because now he's real!'"

Eagle-eyed fans might know that despite appearing in a show titled "Sex and the City," Parker never appears fully or even partially naked in any of her scenes. Even in the sexier scenes, she almost always has a sheet pulled up over her or a bra on – and the same goes for all of Parker's projects.

"I don't have any judgment about anyone who chooses to do it," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. "I think it's fantastic that people feel comfortable doing it. It's not some kind of principled position or religious or ideological on my part."

The iconic "Sex and the City" intro would be unrecognizable without Carrie wearing a pink tank top and white tutu while being splashed by a bus emblazoned with an ad for her column. However, that wasn't always the concept.

In the original title sequence, Parker wore a powder blue dress, rather than the iconic tutu.

"There were two wardrobes. One was the tutu, and we did one pass where Sarah Jessica was wearing a blue dress and didn't get splashed; instead, she trips when she sees the ad," show creator Darren Star recalled to Entertainment Weekly in 2017, adding it's now "in the archives."

"I was in a showroom and there was a bucket on the floor, for like, five dollars each or something, and I pull out this tulle skirt, and I'm like, 'I don't know, let's just take this. We'll see,'" Field said in an interview for Emmy TV Legends in 2012.

"So when I showed it to Sarah Jessica, she loved it ... She felt it," she continued.

After convincing Darren Star to let them use the out-of-the-box piece, it soon became synonymous with Carrie's character.

The series led to a "cupcake phenomenon," Armstrong told Business Insider.

"There was a worldwide cupcake phenomenon that only recently waned," she said. "Everyone in the cupcake business said this. It was one scene in one episode, but it created this buzz."

Armstrong added that cosmopolitans, which were previously seen as a "niche drink," and designer footwear both saw a rise in popularity.

According to the New York Daily News, Corbett was only supposed to appear in a finite number of episodes. However, after he and Carrie's heartbreaking breakup, fans of the show begged the producers to bring Aidan back.

"What happened was the fans kind of got together and bonded together over the internet," Corbett told the Daily News in 2019. "They mailed [the producers] these little, I guess little 6-inch kind of unfinished wooden chairs. And they said, 'Don't leave Aidan unfinished,' right?' ... Because, you know, [he] was a furniture maker, and it's an unfinished chair ... I thought it was kind of cute."

According to Marie Claire, McConaughey was the fourth actor offered the guest spot, behind Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, and Warren Beatty. In fact, if you look closely at the scene when guest star Sarah Michelle Geller is telling Parker's character who she'll be meeting, she mouths Beatty's name but "Matthew McConaughey" is dubbed over it.

The film crew and wardrobe department did a great job at concealing Parker's bump, but Sarah Jessica Parker was in fact pregnant with her first son while the fifth season was being filmed.

This is also the reason that the fifth season was cut short and the sixth season was split into two parts, as Parker was on maternity leave.

Though you can't see it in the final version, behind-the-scenes shots show Parker's heels were physically taped to her feet to avoid them slipping off.

It's a well-known fact that the "Sex and the City" cast never re-wore anything that appeared on the show – all except for Carrie's famous fur coat.

It appears multiple times throughout the first and second seasons and then disappears entirely until the final episode when Carrie is walking through the streets of New York on the phone with Mr. Big.

In the season one episode titled "The Drought," Carrie accidentally passes gas while spending the night at Big's apartment. He teases her and she is mortified that he may never see her the same way again.

"I insisted on doing the sound to get it right," Noth said during a 2021 appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show," "because I'm an expert in farts."

"There were so many great moments in the series of comedy," he continued. "It was just a blast to do it."

After his appearance on Clarkson's show and following the release of the reboot, "And Just Like That," Noth was accused of sexual assault by multiple women. He has denied the accusations and no criminal charges have been filed.

In 2021, Sarah Jessica Parker told Vogue that she "kept every single solitary thing" from her time on "Sex and the City."

Parker revealed she kept many items from the original series, from the iconic blue Manolo Blahnik heels Mr. Big proposed to Carrie with in the first movie to the bedazzled panties her character wore during an ill-fated fashion show.

Speaking to Business Insider, the costume designers for "And Just Like That" revealed Parker lent them items from her archive for the new series.

"We didn't want to toss them around or treat these items poorly, because they're beloved," costume designer Molly Rogers told Insider. "There's no show really like this, that has these iconic pieces where people say, 'Ooh, the cupcake handbag from Judith Leiber.' ... Viewers almost have relationships with them."