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Carrie… Miranda… Dorothy Zbornak?
Those names may not roll off the tongue, but the truth is that there are plenty of people who find commonalities between Sex and the City and The Golden Girls. You can lose yourself in Reddit threads and published essays on the topic, or check out this (not particularly SFW) old Robot Chicken video for further inquiry.
As such, it shouldn’t be too much of a shocker to hear a SATC star discussing the phenomenon. But that doesn’t make it any less fun.
On the latest episode of her Are You a Charlotte? podcast, Kristin Davis schmoozed with her guest — Today cohost and former First Daughter Jenna Bush Hager — and reflected on what the television landscape was like for shows about women prior to Sex and the City‘s 1998 debut.
“There were not shows where there were four leading women, who were interesting and different characters,” the actress recalled.
HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection
“Was [SATC] the first?” Bush Hager asked, to which Davis replied, “I mean… there’s The Golden Girls, which people love to compare us to. And, obviously, an incredible show in it’s own right, in it’s own way.”
“But different,” interjected Bush Hager.
“It was multicam,” Davis said, describing the typical sitcom format of the day, then wondered, “And I don’t know how old those characters were meant to be.”
Buena Vista Television/ Courtesy: Everett
Bush Hager clearly knows her GGs, and noted “they were meant to be in their 50s.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh! That’s so painful!” Davis exclaimed, before emitting what can only be described as a pained wheeze, while Hager added that she and her former Today cohost Hoda Kotb have had this same discussion many times in the past.
“Don’t you feel like ‘aging’ has changed?” she asked.
“Thank God!” Davis replied. “No offense to anyone.”
While it is true that the three Golden Girls who were not Sophia were meant to be in their 50s at the beginning of the show in 1985, Bea Arthur and Betty White were both a little older at 63. Rue McLanahan was just 51. And, in a weird twist, Estelle Getty, who was playing Arthur’s mother, was actually a year younger than her onscreen daughter at 62. (Picture it: makeup!)
“I thought they were 80,” Davis, who is 60 and now plays the character of Charlotte on And Just Like That 20-plus years after SATC concluded, said once she caught her breath. “Sometimes it’s really good to remember these things… that are just part of the big picture of what society is telling us to expect from our lives. And it’s not true.”
Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
Earlier in the podcast episode, when talking about how it took HBO a little while to fully commit to Sex and the City, she remarked how the network was mostly known for boxing, replaying movies, and their original series Dream On back in the day.
Bush Hager, a little too young at age 43, didn’t recall the racy comedy created by the team of Marta Kaufman and David Crane before they made Friends. Davis pitched it as “every week a different girl would be nude,” and recalled being an auditioning actress in Los Angeles at the time and thinking “Oh my God, I can’t audition for that.”
Check out Davis’ full discussion with Bush Hager in the Are You a Charlotte?
