If television producers could find a way to make a show about Carrie Bradshaw in utero, they would try it. So invested is the team associated with “Sex and the City” in extending the life span of Candace Bushnell’s seminal character that they have dipped into her back story — her high-school years before the arrival of Mr. Big and the consumption of all those cosmopolitans — to come up with “The Carrie Diaries.” The CW series debuts tomorrow night at 8.
This Carrie Bradshaw is a blonde confection with poofy hair and poofy skirts and is played by AnnaSophia Robb, a diminutive, Denver-born actress whose first job, at age 9, was in a McDonald’s commercial where she “got to wear a fabulously corny costume, a weird beret and eat cold chicken McNuggets.”
Let’s just say on “The Carrie Diaries,” which takes place in 1984, Carrie, who is only 16, has decidedly traded up. The addiction to shoes is in its pupal stage but still potent. “One day they lined all [Carrie’s] shoes up at the studio,” Robb says. “They covered the entire hallway.”
Fashion obsessions aside, the show aspires to connect the Carrie we know with a believable ancestor. “I would say the series was an origin story,” says executive producer Amy B. Harris, a writer on the original “Sex and the City.” “ ‘Smallville’ was the origin of how Clark Kent became Superman. This is the story of how the young Carrie became the iconic character. It’s a story of firsts. Her first ‘I love you.’ Her first sexual experience. Her first time seeing Manhattan.”
This Carrie lives in suburban Connecticut, where she and her obnoxious younger sister, Dorrit (Stefania Owen), are being raised by their dad, Tom (Matt Letscher), after the death of their mother. The usual high-school trappings (a trio of friends, a boyfriend) form a backdrop to Carrie’s foray into Manhattan, where she scores not only an internship at a law firm — thanks, Dad! — but has a “chance” encounter with the style editor at Interview magazine. A lifetime dedicated to the pursuit of glamour is one Metro North train ride away.
Of course, none of this is going to work if viewers don’t buy Robb in the part. “Sex and the City” hasn’t shown an original episode since 2004 and Sarah Jessica Parker, like many of the show’s fans, is now, at 47, decidedly middle-aged.
“I feel tremendous amounts of pressure to deliver for fans of the show,” says Harris, who saw 100 of the 500 actresses who auditioned for the lead role. “For a while, we weren’t finding her and then AnnaSophia walked in the door. A revelation. I had been struggling to articulate the traits I had been looking for in a young Carrie Bradshaw. No one’s going to replace Sarah Jessica Parker. Here I understood how this young girl becomes that amazing woman. She’s also vulnerable and sweet.”
Robb is so young, only 19, that she had to catch up with “Sex and the City” in reruns when she heard about the role of the young Carrie Bradshaw. “You can never get tired of it, the characters are so well-written,” she says. From the way she describes it, the most important relationship Carrie has on the show is with her father.
“She feels a responsibility to make him happy. She’s the sort of child who needs to do well in school and is looking to him for advice,” Robb says. “It’s just as important as an actual relationship. He’s her ideal man.”
Harris says the show got lucky in that Robb’s moving to New York from Colorado was something they could take advantage of. “AnnaSophia is having the same experiences as Carrie. She’s living away from her parents for the first time. She brings this wide-open experience to the show.”
So what does Robb think of New York? While the series was in production, Hurricane Sandy struck the city. Robb lost electricity and moved in with a friend in Brooklyn to be closer to the set at Steiner Studios. Now that she’s back home in Manhattan, she can get to know Carrie Bradshaw’s updated Manhattan.
“I love the High Line,” she says. “I like to go on foggy, grey days when there aren’t too many tourists. Then I just went to Chelsea Market. It was really quiet the time of day we went. You can cross the street in New York and there’s a completely different vibe.”