Sarah Jessica Parker Dazzles on Dialogue with the Dean

Sarah Jessica Parker, award-winning actress, producer, and entrepreneur; style icon; showbusiness lifer; and the most recent guest in School of Communication Dean E. Patrick Johnson’s Dialogue with the Dean series, proved to a packed house on April 25 why she’s been at the top of our collective must-see lists for the better part of five decades.

In equal measure, Parker was deeply insightful and laugh-out-loud funny; curious and humble; generous with anecdotes and self-effacing when it came to her cultural capital. The ninety-minute conversation flew by, and the 250-plus guests in the Josephine Louis Theater (and hundreds more streaming the conversation online) walked away with a real sense of how and why she made it so far and so fabulously in a notoriously difficult business.

“If you stay in it, and you're willing to work hard in a way that is satisfying and fulfilling, then there is a place for you to change what it is that isn't good enough yet for you,” she said of working in entertainment, especially as a woman. “But you only get that opportunity by sticking around and really learning.”

And learn she did, starting at a very early age. While money was tight in Parker’s childhood home, access to art and literature for her and her siblings flowed freely. Her mother was an educator and instilled in her brood an enduring appreciation for all manner of human expression—and an enviable work ethic. The fourth of her mother’s eight children (her parents divorced when Parker was a toddler and her mother remarried), she realized quite young that her place was onstage. So promising was she that her family moved from Ohio to New York to foster this gift. That leap of faith was legitimized when, at age 11, Parker was cast in the Broadway play The Innocents. From there she landed a role as the orphan July in Annie, but after a year took a job on a TV series—a job she auditioned for, was offered, and accepted while her parents were out of town.

“I gave my notice at the show and said, ‘I’m off to Hollywood! I’m going to do television’” she chuckled, adding, “I put what I thought was my official notice in, which is two weeks, everybody. Two weeks.”

But the director told her that the notice was shy one day, so she had to stay – but if she did, he’d make her Annie. She wound up playing the lead for a year.

“I was never bored,” she said. “It was dreamy.”

Parker then landed a starring role on the CBS series Square Pegs as quirky high schooler Patty Greene. Though the show only lasted a season, Parker called it “a very peculiar, super smart, almost like an experiment of a show,” one that she loved dearly. It was on the set of Footloose when she learned the show was canceled, and the film’s producer, Daniel Melnick, told her that it was a good thing, and new opportunities would beckon. He was not wrong. In the years that followed, she enjoyed star turns in L.A. Story, Honeymoon in Vegas, Hocus Pocus, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, First Wives Club, and others.

In the late ‘90s, Parker made a huge career pivot by moving back into television—a real no-no for serious actors in those days—and into a character wildly different than anything she’d yet played: Carrie Bradshaw in HBO’s Sex and the City.

The show kicked off an era of prestige television that remains ascendent. And with The Sopranos and The Wire debuting hot on City’s tail, it solidified HBO (now Max) as a power player in storytelling—and, today, streaming.

And for Parker, it was lifechanging. Her portrayal of Bradshaw captivated legions and powered the show through six seasons, two movies, and now three seasons of the spinoff series And Just Like That. Parker, in playing Bradshaw, has won four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards.

Beyond the biographical bits, Parker and Johnson swapped tales of being from big families, the bygone era of appointment television, becoming a producer and an entrepreneur, and Parker’s regret in not wearing Northwestern purple to the event, and much more. Regarding her family, Johnson asked what Parker’s children have taught her.

“Skibidi?” she replied to audience laughter. “Ask them, I don’t know. They say it and laugh. I don’t understand – it’s not funny.”

She continued in a more thoughtful tone: “I'm going to say patience, but it's not just your everyday patience…it's a very different way of being a grownup…I think when you're hoping to have romantic love, you can touch on it in a way, even if you haven't experienced it…But the kind of love that accompanies becoming a parent, if that's what you want, is otherworldly. I don't know if they've taught me that, but they've allowed me that.”

Other surprising revelations:

• On the ubiquitous cosmos: “I really didn’t drink very much (pause) then,” she said, drawing laughs. “People would send over cosmopolitans, and they were always pretty bad.” Then long after the show wrapped, she had a “real” cosmo, “And I was like, ‘oh this is what the fuss was about.’”
• Seeing herself onscreen: “I basically don't see anything I’m in ever. Ever. If I'm forced to go and sit through a screening, like a premiere…they don't want you to get up and leave, which would be my preference,” she said. “It’s unbearable.”
• The one that got away: “I’ve always wanted to play a conductor,” she said pantomiming conducting an orchestra. “Well, Cate (Blanchett, in Tor) already did it, so I can’t do it now. Unless it’s in regional theatre.”
• Where Carrie ends and Sarah Jessica begins: “Sorry to disappoint you. The waters are a little muddied. I think the character that I've been playing and get to play for so long, has such a fevered relationship with shoes and fashion…I love playing that part for many, many reasons, one of them being that I've got my hands on such really extraordinary things all day long… But I couldn't wear a lot of that in my own life, and I wouldn't, and I've been like that from the beginning.” Parker revealed that most of what she buys, including the black fitted overalls and button-up white blouse she was wearing, are second-hand items—a penchant developed at church tag sales during her childhood.
• Living intentionally: “It doesn't mean that I won't spend money, but I like to be thoughtful…I am not buying a Starbucks ever. I'm not buying my coffee outside my house.”
• It hasn’t gotten old: “I love (Sex and the City)…I love the people, I loved our crew, I love the streets of New York. I love playing a character that people had such strong feelings about—not always good feelings either, I understand,” she said. “I am very fond of playing (Carrie)…I love her, and I know she is a flawed human being and imperfect. I also know that she is a deeply devoted friend and was a wife and person of enormous generosity.”

Dialogue with the Dean is a series of conversations with emerging and established communicators who are advancing their fields, challenging paradigms, and creating new knowledge. We’ll be back next fall for the 2025-2026 Dialogue with the Dean events.

Watch the entire interview below, replete with many more insights and behind-the-scenes details from her storied career.