Yahoo News Sarah Jessica Parker Reveals the ‘Complicated’ Path to Rewearing Carrie’s Wedding Dress in 'And Just Like That…'
The actress worried if the gown, which her 'Sex and the City' character wore in the second movie, would fit when she put it back on in the season 2 premiere
Gotham/GC Images
Warning: This post contains spoilers from the first two episodes of season 2 of Max's And Just Like That...
Carrie Bradshaw repurposed her pain on the season 2 premiere of And Just Like That…, slipping into the Vivienne Westwood wedding gown from her failed wedding to Mr. Big for the Met Gala.
When up-and-coming designer Smoke (Bethlehem Million), who created Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) gown for the Met Gala, themed Veiled Beauty, couldn’t pull off the tailoring thanks to two seamstresses who came down with the stomach flu, they resolve to ditch the gown last minute and pull something out of Carrie’s vast closet. Carrie decides to give the wedding dress and headpiece she wore when Big (Chris Noth) left her at the altar in the second Sex and the City movie a shot, and polishes it off with the new cape that Smoke made.
“I may have something,” Carrie tells Smoke. “I’ve only worn it once. It’s not the best memory.”
Just like her character, Parker, 58, went through a bit of a journey when it came to reuniting with the iconic wedding dress.
“We weren't entirely certain that we could get the dress back,” she tells PEOPLE. “It was in London and unearthing it was complicated — getting it through customs in time and then making sure was this, in fact, the original dress? The color looked different.”
Gotham/GC Images
Parker and writer and director Michael Patrick King wanted to change the lore surrounding the dress.
“How would it become something else?” the mom of three wondered. “How would we layer it and give it a new life and have it feel modern and change the poetry that surrounded that dress from a lot of really painful but important memories that I don't think Carrie really wanted to let go of, especially given this loss?”
Parker also worried about fitting into the gown more than a decade later and said it “was terrifying to put it on.”
HBO
Luckily, it fit. “It was really incredible and fun and thank goodness it fit!” Parker says. “It was very special to have it back in our possession for a brief period and to figure out how it helped tell this story now.”
King, 68, knew including the wedding dress “was a huge Easter egg for the fans” who had been along for Carrie’s journey since the SATC days. “I knew that that was the gold to show that bluebird in that box for everybody who knows what that means,” he tells PEOPLE.
The two-time Emmy winner wanted to make sure new viewers didn’t feel left out of the moment, though.
“It must mean something for someone who is never seen the scene where Carrie is left at the altar,” King says. “So, you just have to create a story, like in that case, the Met Ball, which is named Veiled Beauty, which gets me to wedding veil, which gets to wedding gown, and then Carrie tells Smoke, ‘It wasn't the best memory.’ All you need to know is it was a bad moment that she's putting it on, and then everybody gets to enjoy the gown.”
Adding Smoke’s cape brought the dress into the AJLT era.
“Because we always try to do something new, we add Smoke's cape to it, then it's fresh for everybody,” King says. “It's not the same moment, but it's adorned.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
New episodes of And Just Like That… drop Thursdays on Max.
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
