When Carrie Bradshaw is invited to a party in “Alive!,” the fourth episode of And Just Like That … Season 2, the occasion seems like a decent quid pro quo opportunity. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is promoting a new book about death and grief. And the event—for a new power-elder publication called Vivant—is being hosted by Enid Frick (Candice Bergen), the former editor in chief of Vogue from the old Sex and the City days, whose public seal of approval could really move some volumes.
“You have to go to that old lady event and work it,” Carrie’s friend Seema (Sarita Choudhury) commands her. “Carrie, don’t be afraid to be transactional!” The plan Carrie and Seema cook up is that Carrie will agree to write for Vivant in exchange for getting her book some promotion. But at the party, Carrie learns that Enid isn’t looking to barter with cultural currency—she wants cold, hard cash.
“I would be honored to write for Vivant,” Carrie tells Enid, who looks bemused.
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“I don’t want you to write a thousand words about purses,” Enid laughs. “I want you to give a hundred thousand dollars.” (It’s about time someone asked!) When Carrie realizes aloud that she’s there only because of her recently acquired funds, Enid nods. “Due to tragic circumstances,” the editor observes, “your pockets recently got deeper.”
Those tragic circumstances, of course, involved a Peloton, a heart attack, and the death of John J. Preston, a.k.a. Mr. Big, a.k.a. Carrie’s on-again, off-again, on-again love. (In the show, a year has elapsed since that fateful, fatal night.) Big’s death, which happened in the pilot episode of And Just Like That …, differentiated the rebooted series from the original and cleared the way for new story lines for its main character. But it also set a new baseline for, and added a number of zeros to, Carrie’s personal finances.
While parts of Carrie’s latest arc have involved romantic interests, some of the more intriguing aspects of And Just Like That … haven’t been about the dudes she’s laying, but rather the dues she’s paying. Once a proud constituent of the creative underclass, Carrie is now a moneyed member of the investor set. Her contributions are no longer measured in word counts, but in commas. So just how much money does Carrie have now, anyway? You know what they say: A lady never tells. But we can try to guess.
One of Carrie’s longest-running and most hectic relationships is with money. (I couldn’t help but laugh at one fed-up, frank 2017 headline I saw on the subject: “Carrie Bradshaw Was Rubbish With Money, Which Would Have Been Fine If She Wasn’t Such a Dick About It.”)
For longtime Sex and the City viewers, Carrie’s spending habits were often a source of frustration because of both the realities and the impossibilities of her situation. SATC-era Carrie was exceptionally spendthrift, never meeting a tutu or a peplum silhouette she wouldn’t spring for—an impulsivity that felt recognizable, though still annoying. And yet the show negated some verisimilitude by failing to truly account for how Carrie made ends meet. How could a weekly columnist afford that many Jimmy Choos and cosmos and cab rides, even with that sweet, sweet rent control?
In a book about the series, clothing designer Patricia Field pointed out that Carrie was a proto-influencer and hypebeastess who would have gotten plenty of fashion perks. “I never worry that Carrie’s wardrobe doesn’t make sense for a writer’s income,” Field says in Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, “because I rationalize that she lives in Manhattan, knows designers, and can walk into a showroom and borrow what she wants.” Still, we know from several moments in And Just Like That … that Carrie hasn’t exactly been returning her most iconic dresses. And she’d have to be racking up a lot of freebies: One Elle analysis of Carrie’s closet in SATC determined that she sported some $175,000 worth of lewks in Season 4 alone.
It was during that fourth season that one of the show’s most memorable episodes aired, called “Ring a Ding Ding.” Like this week’s “Alive!,” that January 2002 installment involves a mention of Vogue, an unexpected request for an investment, and the specter of Mr. Big’s lucre. It’s also an illuminating episode when it comes to making dollars and sense of Carrie’s past and current personal ledger.
In “Ring a Ding Ding,” Carrie is flailing. She is in the midst of a renovation-fueled breakup with Aidan and on the brink of losing her beloved Upper East Side apartment. She reaches out to a bank for a loan but is told she’s an “unattractive loan candidate,” given her total liquid worth of $1,657. When she complains to Miranda, her friend helps her do a little bit of Manolo Blahnik math: Carrie’s hundred or so pairs of shoes at $400 a pop (or more!) equals a lot of money that could have been spent on a down payment, ma’am! Later, when she tells her entire friend group about her predicament, she notices that Charlotte, fresh off a divorce settlement, is the only one who doesn’t offer to help chip in five figures. This infuriates Carrie so much (?!) that she confronts Charlotte about it, in one of the most controversial moments in the show’s canon.
“What kills me is, you don’t even have to work,” Carrie tells Charlotte. “You’re volunteering!”
“I love you,” Charlotte responds, “but it’s not my job to fix your finances. You’re a 35-year-old woman. You need to learn to stand on your own.”
Charlotte is right, though she ultimately relents, giving Carrie her 2.17-karat engagement ring from a failed marriage to raise the funds to keep the apartment. (Writer Amy Harris told CNBC that both she and Parker believe that Carrie eventually paid Charlotte back, bit by bit, though the series never depicts that.) But not before Carrie makes a visit to Mr. Big for some financial advice.
Donning a sort of My Fair Lady–looking white outfit complete with gloves, she visits her then-ex at his office. “I once read that you took something like $3 million and leveraged it to build a $100 million building,” she tells him. “I need money. You know money. I need to know what you know about money.”
Big then smirks that Big smirk and says, “I’ll tell you how to get the money,” and he writes her a check then and there.
As far as we know, she never cashes it after she’s warned by Miranda that “when a man gives you money, you give him control.” But years later, she eventually weds Big, which is one way to avoid paying a broker’s fee.
How much dough did Carrie marry into? While it’s hard to say, there are a few clues throughout the two shows. (And the first movie, since the second one doesn’t exist. Weird!)
“You see this guy?” Samantha Jones says about Big in the Sex and the City pilot. “He’s the next Donald Trump, except he’s younger and much better looking.” Being “the next Donald Trump,” of course, could mean baron—or it could mean bankrupt. But when the show was written, in the late 1990s, Trump had recently pulled off a “Houdini-like escape from creditors,” according to a 1996 Forbes piece, and it’s safe to assume that Samantha’s comparison was a reference to Big’s heavy hand in some major real estate wheelings and dealings. (Well, that and his predilection for riding around with a chauffeur.)
If that’s the case, bully for Carrie, because those real estate holdings and other assets would have appreciated something fierce since then, given the low-interest environment that lasted more than a decade. So too would Big’s vinicultural holdings—that three-quarters of a Napa vineyard was well timed! And Big wasn’t just some cog, either: Based on context clues, he was more like the machine.
In the Sex and the City movie, we see that Big’s email address has the domain @jjpny.com, suggesting that Big—a.k.a. John J. Preston, initials JJP—was principal of his own firm, a highly lucrative situation. In the same movie, we also see him buy a penthouse apartment across the street from the Met, which would probably cost tens of millions of dollars. And all the while, even after they wed, Carrie keeps her apartment, too, at the reliable Miranda’s urging. Ultimately, it’s that apartment that helps Carrie regain her footing and stand on her own in the wake of Big’s death.
In the first season of And Just Like That …, Carrie learns that Big bequeathed his ex-wife Natasha $1 million, ostensibly to say, I’m sorry I married the woman I cheated on you with. But based on everyone’s reactions, it seems as though this gesture represents only a sliver of his net worth. (Side question: How rich is Natasha that she declines the gift?!) So, all told, if we assume Carrie inherited the bulk of her husband’s estate to add to her own personal earnings from a handful of successful books (and some real dismal podcast episodes), it’s likely she’s now in control of a solid eight—and possibly even nine?—figures of wealth.
Which helps explain why Carrie doesn’t seem particularly upset to have bought and sold that downtown apartment so rashly last season, in a pair of transactions that easily could have set her back a million bucks or more. Or why, when Enid hits her up for a hundred grand, she seems momentarily taken aback but doesn’t protest. (Indeed, she deems it a PayPal-able amount; ho hum!) What it doesn’t explain is why Carrie is so eager to drum up book sales that she is willing to prostrate herself before an old foil like Enid Frick. But that also doesn’t need unraveling: That’s the old, elemental Carrie Bradshaw coming through, baring her tortured and proud and needy artist’s soul—the soul that has always made Carrie so infuriating and so magnetic, so vivant, both within the world of the shows and to viewers.
Twenty years ago, Sex and the City thrived when it allowed the characters’ fantastical confections to clash with the constraints of their lives—when it tickled viewers with all the frothy cocktails and brunches and unclasped brassieres and then hit them with fears and fights and tightening belts. (It’s funny that Miranda’s move to Brooklyn, which was played as a cost-cutting conciliation back in 2004, probably wound up with an ROI on par with Big’s best JJP NY deals.) The show demonstrated that even hoity-toity problems could resonate. (One of the most searing friend fights I’ve ever seen on-screen was the one between Carrie and Miranda over … a move to Paris with a globally renowned artiste.)
So far, And Just Like That … has struggled to locate that same tension. Lisa and Herbert’s blithe “whoopsies, we forgot to send the Paperless Post!” reaction to their extravagant party foul in this week’s episode, for example, was kind of exasperating. And Seema’s stolen Birkin bag in last week’s episode felt derivative of better stories about both Birkins and stolen luxury goods from the first go-round of the show. But Carrie’s shift from talent to benefactor was more promising, a bridge between the character’s past and future and a glimpse into some depths that have yet to be plumbed.
Carrie used to define herself by her words, but now everywhere she goes, someone else is calculating her worth. Once the curious columnist who got to ask all the questions, Carrie is now on the other side of the intrusive, pushy asks. Once the flighty friend who felt entitled to a cut of Charlotte’s excess riches, she’s now a target to be circled by savvy vultures. Being newly independent and wealthy has made her more powerful—and more vulnerable, too. It’s easy to bristle at, or eye-roll about, some of these champagne problems, sure. But it’s also easy to drink them in, to simply pop the cork and enjoy the buzz. It’s what the younger, hipper, broker Carrie Bradshaw would want you to do—right up until the moment that her credit card got declined.
