OnlyOnAOL: Sarah Jessica Parker's secret to a happy life
By: Donna Freydkin
"I'm not really a workaholic," says Sarah Jessica Parker, as she triple-tasks with aplomb. "I just have a lot to do right now."
That's like Carrie Bradshaw, Parker's beloved "Sex and the City" character," announcing that she owns one or two pairs of shoes.
Speaking of footwear, Parker has her own constantly-growing line, made in Italy and eminently, shockingly, singularly comfortable. It's true. She just launched her fragrance Stash, an immediate hit that sold out. And she announced a forthcoming line of little black dresses, designed by Parker and made in her hometown of New York City. So yeah, you could say she's a bit busy.
"Usually it doesn't feel so overwhelming. It will slow down," she says. "I get up early every day, before anyone else, and I work. But it's answering emails and doing specifics and catching up with the news. You do it when it comes in. For the most part, the work doesn't have a schedule anymore. It's good and it's bad."
Oh, and she's headlining the HBO series "Divorce," which took her four years to bring to the small screen. She plays Frances, a recruiter who's let her dreams pass her by and now wants to start her life over, while she feels she still can, so she decides to leave her husband. And then he leaves her right back. The show opens with a divine dinner party that leads to disaster. (A special advance premiere of Sunday's episode is available to stream right now via HBO NOW and HBO GO, in addition to HBO On Demand and affiliate portals).
If she could give advice to Frances, says Parker, she'd tell her to be less, perhaps, impulsive.
"I would tell her to try and make choices that with some certainty she can feel good about after," says Parker.
She sees very little of herself in Frances, a woman hamstrung by her bad decisions. "The stuff with the children feels the most familiar. But the rest of it just doesn't. Eventually Carrie didn't feel like a foreigner to me. Frances still feels like a foreigner."
In season two, says Parker, Frances discovers how to be on her own -- or not. "She longed for this life and when you get it, how prepared are you really? How do you be somebody in the world who is dating? It's horrifying and scary. How do you then just not retreat?"
Mom of three Parker -- she has a son and twin daughters with husband Matthew Broderick -- says her girls aren't fashionistas. By any stretch.
"They mess around with my shoes. They wear my shoes. Now they wear a bunch of my dresses to bed. They've only just started. They're not passionate about it. They have other interests. They like a lot of other things as much, if not more so, than that," she says.
In person, Parker is professional, gracious, courteous and kind. She remembers every detail, of every interaction, and asks about your kids, your house, your neighborhood and your job. She walks her kids to school and is mostly left alone, even though she has iconic status in this town.
"I think if you don't call attention to it -- sometimes I feel more public than other times. You live your life. There are things we love to do and we're not going to stop doing them," she says. "So you just kind of do it."
