:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(705x457:707x459)/Candace-Bushnell-Chris-Noth-042425-2-17c45e484a5b40a39a00f938a47ccc5c.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,0&ssl=1 "‘Sex and the City’ Author Candace Bushnell on Ending Her Romance with Real-Life Mr. Big")
Candace Bushnell is looking back on her own Carrie Bradshaw-like romance with her very own Mr. Big.
The author of the 1996 book Sex and the City, which inspired the hit TV show, opened up on a recent episode of Are You A Charlotte?. The podcast, hosted by Kristen Davis, who played Charlotte York on the show, examines different themes in the beloved show about love and womanhood.
Bushnell based Chris Noth‘s Mr. Big — the long-running love interest of the show’s protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw — on a character from her own past, the author revealed. He was, in some ways, a cliche born of the era.
“You know, the real Mr. Big was — he was a great guy, but he was also a very powerful man,” Bushnell said. “And, you know, powerful men in New York City at the time were really a specific breed.”
On the show, Mr. Big was certainly temperamental, but in some ways he was “even softer” than the image the author had crafted him from, she added.
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The author’s real-life Mr. Big threw a phone once and the story ended up in Page Six, she recalled.
“But he was actually a great guy, and I was really in love with him,” Bushnell reflected. “We were in just totally different places.”
At the time, Bushnell’s lover was “winding down” and later left New York City for Vermont, where he still resides today, she said. Her Mr. Big wanted to get married and have children, “and I was so not there,” she added, and that was the end of their relationship.
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Still, Bushnell sometimes does think back on her past love’s new life and wonders what could have been.
“Why didn’t I go for that? I could have been living on a farm in New Hampshire or Vermont, with horses,” Bushnell said. When Davis asked if she would have wanted that life, Bushnell replied, “Well, now I think I would.”
