Sex and the City: Characters

=== Main characters ===

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker)
She is the narrator of each episode. Each episode is structured around her train of thought while writing her weekly column, "Sex and the City," for the fictitious newspaper The New York Star. A member of the New York glitterati, she is a club/bar/restaurant staple who is known for her unique fashion sense (particularly footwear). This is evident in the episode "The Real Me" in season four, when she is asked by Lynne Cameron (played by Margaret Cho) to be in a New York fashion show. She works on her in her apartment, writing newspaper articles focusing on the different aspects of a relationship. In later seasons, her essays are collected as a book and she begins taking assignments from Vogue and New York Magazine. Carrie is house-proud; her one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment is in an Upper East Side brownstone]]. Despite several long-term boyfriends, Carrie is entangled with "Mr. Big"(Chris Noth) in a complicated, multifaceted on and off relationship.

Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall)
She is the oldest and most sexually confident of the foursome. Samantha is an independent businesswoman, with a career in public relations. She is confident, strong, outspoken, and calls herself a "try-sexual" (meaning she'll try anything once). One of Samantha's best qualities is her loyalty to her friends. She believes that she has had "hundreds" of soulmates and requires that her sexual partners leave, "an hour after I climax." During the course of the show it is revealed that Samantha's glamorous, impenetrable facade and dismissive approach to love actually hides a sensitive, caring nature. Samantha has a number of relationships in the show . In Season 6, Samantha's character further develops when she is suddenly diagnosed with cancer when visiting a plastic surgeon for a breast implant consultation. An operation and chemotherapy challenge Samantha, but she beats cancer and it becomes clear the experience has renewed her with a new perspective on life and love with her most permanent and fulfilling relationship yet, with a younger man, model/actor, Smith Jerrod.

Charlotte York (Kristin Davis)
She works in an art gallery and has had a conventional Connecticut upbringing. She is the most conservative and positive of the group, the one who places the most emphasis on emotional love as opposed to lust, and is a true romantic; always searching for her "knight in shining armor." She scoffs at the lewder, more libertine antics of her friends (primarily Samantha), presenting a more traditional attitude about relationships, usually based around "the rules" of love and dating. Despite her conservative outlook, she has been known to make concessions (while married) that even surprise her more sexually liberated girlfriends. Charlotte was a "straight A" student who attended Smith College where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma majoring in Art History with a minor in Finance. During the series, it is also revealed that Charlotte was voted homecoming queen, prom queen, "most popular," student body president, track team captain and was active as a teen model.

Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon)
She is a career-minded lawyer with extremely cynical views on relationships and men. A Harvard Law School graduate from Philadelphia with two siblings, she is Carrie's best friend, confidante, and voice of reason. In the early seasons, she is portrayed as masculine and borderline misandric, but this image softens over the years, particularly after she becomes pregnant by her on/off boyfriend, Steve Brady, whom she eventually marries. The birth of her son, Brady Hobbes, brings up new issues for her Type A, workaholic personality, but she soon finds a way to balance career, being single and motherhood. Of the four women, she is the first to purchase her own apartment (across the park from Carrie, on the Upper West Side), and later a home in Brooklyn.

=== Also Starring ===

Mr. Big (Chris Noth), Seasons 1-6 + Movie
He is a pseudonym for the charming, attractive, sarcastic, and wealthy love interest for Carrie Bradshaw. He is the reason for many of Carrie's breakdowns as he never seemed ready to fully commit to Carrie. During the course of the series he marries Natasha, who is ten years younger than Carrie. An affair with Carrie destroys Big's marriage and Carrie's relationship with her other major love interest, furniture designer Aidan. In the final episode, Mr. Big realizes that life without Carrie is nothing. He is a big jazz fan and a heavy cigar smoker with plenty of money to burn. His name, John, was not revealed until the end of the series finale.

Steve Brady (David Eigenberg), Seasons 2-6 + Movie
He is Miranda's on and off boyfriend throughout the series since he was introduced in the second season. He eventually marries Miranda at the end of Season 6, after they had a child together at the end of Season 4. Heis one of the few men on the show meant to counter-balance all the emotionally unstable men encountered throughout the series, as he is a constant and sensitive male character. His alcoholic mother, Mary Brady, played by Anne Meara, is also a prominent recurring character.

Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson), Seasons 1-6 + Movie
Often referred to as the show's "Fifth Lady," He is Carrie's best friend outside of the three women. A gay talent agent from an aristocratic family with a sense of style paralleled only by Carrie's, viewers receive the impression that they have a long-standing relationship built within their younger, wilder days in the New York City club and bar scene in the 1980s. He had said that they have been friends since Carrie was riding the subways and wearing Candie's. The only supporting character to receive his own storylines on occasion, Stanford represents the show's most constant gay point of view to sex on the show, generally based around the physical insecurities and inadequacies of someone who does not "have that gay look." In the last two seasons of the show, he is partnered with Broadway dancer Marcus Adente.

Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis), Seasons 6 + Movie
He is a young waiter Samantha seduces. She tries to maintain her usual sex-only relationship with him, but he slowly pushes for something more. He is a wannabe actor whose career Samantha jump starts using her PR connections (including changing his name to "Smith Jerrod" from "Jerry Jerrod"), getting him a modeling job that turns into a film role. Just when she thinks Smith's age and experiences aren't enough for her, he gives her unconditional support during her fight with breast cancer. In the final episode, Smith flies back from a film set in Canada just to tell her that he loves her, which she counters with "You have meant more to me than any man I've ever known," which, for Samantha, is a far greater statement.

Harry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler), Seasons 5-6 + Movie
He is Charlotte's Jewish divorce lawyer who is incredibly attracted to her from the beginning. She is not attracted to him initially, but tries to pursue a sex-only relationship with him, which leads to one of exclusivity and love as opposed to her relationship with Trey, which was reversed in this aspect. After her conversion to Judaism and one big argument that sends them in separate directions for a few weeks, the two marry and begin trying to have/adopt a child. In the end, they are approved for a Chinese adoption and adopt a girl.

Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Season 6
He was referred to by Carrie occasionally as "The Russian," is a famous artist who becomes Carrie's lover in the final season. He sweeps her off her feet with huge romantic gestures and shows her the foreign pockets of New York that she has never seen before. Her relationship with him brings up all sorts of questions in Carrie's mind about finding love past "a certain age" and whether or not she wants children. When he's preparing to return to Paris for a solo exhibit he invites Carrie to come live with him, which, after several deliberations (and one fight) with her friends, she does. After spending some time there, she realizes that he will never reciprocate the level of emotional involvement that she offers because his life and career will always come first.

Trey MacDougal (Kyle MacLachlan)
Trey MacDougal is an attractive WASP, a charming gentleman with a pedigree as fine as Charlotte's, apparently an ideal catch even by her extremely picky standards, and the one she finally marries. His family is as Scottish as the name, even richer then the Yorks, and proves a matriarchate: the undisputed head is Trey's mother Bonny, who rules with an iron fist in a velvet glove, smothering in love the manhood of the adult man who seems quite content to remain for life her tenderly beloved boy, even used to ma sitting by his bath and personally nursing him when sick, maternal tasks a mere wife can't be trusted with to perform to perfection. Just when Charlotte managed to conquer a bit of space exclusively for their marriage, it runs on the rocks of his persistent, pathological inability to perform in the marital bed, which however proves psychosomatic, despite perfect plumbing, but still a hurdle the couple can't take together, so they divorce, and again it's Bonny who sets the ex into her place, outside, while Trey himself now proves physically more compatible.

Aidan Shaw (John Corbett)
The man who manages to stake a more than temporary claim on Carrie's heart would have to be really something. We've seen a parade of paramours - from a pee-happy politician to a jittery jazz guy. Aidan is irresistibly charming, with laid-back sex appeal - witness the slow smile, the twinkle in his eyes, the sweet sayings - that slays Carrie. There are actually two Aidans: the before Carrie had the affair Aidan and the after they got back together for the second time Aidan. And many audience members are specifically in one camp or the other. The before Aidan was a little more grungy and a little softer - the slightly scruffy shaggy hair, the funky shirts, the leather thong around his neck, the backward baseball cap. Then there was the after Aidan - the new, slick look: a short haircut, a sleek dark jacket over a crisp white shirt, the buffed-up body. Those who like the new Aidan say he used to have a belly and those who like the old Aidan say heartbreak made him tougher. Both sides will agree that he definitely looks good now. Aidan Shaw - furniture designer, dog owner, guy with a country cabin - he's the perfect opposite to the commitment-phobic, hard to pin down Mr. Big. Aidan is so warm and accessible and THERE for Carrie. He even refinishes her floors and makes her a home-cooked meal.

Richard Wright (James Remar)
Richard Wright is New York hotel magnate, and sort of a male Samantha: he believes in free love and practices it ruthlessly and literally shamelessly, being such a great catch -wealth, power, good looks for his age- obviously with many of Sam's more attractive rivals, yet the two find their match may also be their soulmate, or is their style just to soulless for that?