Candace Bushnell Tells True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City at Her Upcoming One-Person Show This Friday

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 04 December 2025 21:02

Written by Brad Balfour

Event: Candace Bushnell performs “True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City”
When: Friday, December 5, 2025 
Time: 8 pm
Where: Adler Hall
New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 W 64th St.
New York, NY 10023
Tickets: $59, $79, and $99 (plus applicable fees) 

When scribe Candace Bushnell created Carrie Bradshaw as her alter-ego while writing her “Sex and the City” column, she didn’t want her parents to know that she’d just been to a sex club. She had often appeared on TV, starting back in 1996, when she had her own reality show, “Sex, Lies and Video Clips" on VH1, where — sure enough — Bushnell and a co-host had to go to sex clubs. 

From that auspicious start to this week, the acclaimed novelist brings her one-woman show, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City,” to Adler Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture on Friday, December 5th, 2025 at 8 pm. In addition, a limited number of VIP Meet and Greet tickets are available that include a photo opportunity with Bushnell. 

This best-selling novelist and TV producer is The “real life Carrie Bradshaw,” and, most recently, star of this one-woman show. Originally performed off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater in Manhattan, the New York Times declared it a “critic’s pick.” Born in 1958, this 60-something has now performed an international version of the show in over 10 countries, including South Africa, and the UK, where Bushnell performed to a sold-out crowd at the London Palladium. The Times of London choose True Tales as their must-see show of the week.

She has appeared on dozens and dozens of chat shows, including Oprah and Charlie Rose and is currently scheduled to tour “True Tales…” in Europe and the US in 2026.

Famously the author of “Sex and the City” — published in 1996 by Atlantic Monthly Press — it became the basis for “Sex and the City,” spawning six-seasons on HBO, two movies and the reboot series “And Just Like That.” Also an acclaimed novelist, Bushnell has authored the international best-selling “Four Blondes,” “Trading Up,” “One Fifth Avenue,” “Lipstick Jungle” and “The Carrie Diaries.” The last two each became network TV series (on NBC and The CW) for two seasons.

Recently, I spoke with Candace in advance of the show. The following is an edit of that conversation.

Q: Being a literary figure on the scene, did you think of that as an achievement and were glad that you got noted for it, or did you just see yourself as another newspaper reporter? 

Candace Bushnell: It just seemed very natural because I was in that business, and most of my friends were also somehow in the media business. They were novelists or others like Morgan Entrekin, who published “Sex and the City” (Atlantic Monthly Press). It just seemed very natural. I didn’t particularly think of myself as being part of one scene or another, but part of the New York scene [overall].

Q: At that time when you were just beginning to get known and ascending in the universe of personalities, had you expected it to take off the way it did? Do you get into discussing this in your show? Tell me about the show and how it connects to your history.

Candace Bushnell: The show is the origin story of Sex and the City, mixed with my life story. It’s how I created "Sex and the City," how hard I worked to get there, why I invented Carrie Bradshaw, and what happened to me after. It’s about how I first came to New York in 1977, and went to Studio 54, had a couple of other little adventures, and then we get into how I created “Sex and the City,” the story of the real Mr. Big, and then there’s a game, real or not real, because there’s so many things that happened in the TV show that happened in my real life — they’re either better or worse.

Q: How did you manage to structure it? Is it merely a chronological thing, or more thematic, how you’ve been doing this as a show as opposed to writing it as a book?

Candace Bushnell: It’s a proper stage show with a set and you know, I watched a couple of  one man, one woman shows, and some stand up comics, but that wasn’t really, you know, that helped. There’s one stand-up comic who I watched a lot. I think her name is Hannah Gadsby. She’s an Australian comic. I started doing it because I met somebody named Mark Johnson, and he did David Foster’s show. 

Foster does a one-man show, and Mark Johnson said “You could do it, a one-woman show.” So I wrote something during Covid, like so many other people, and it just took off from there. We developed it at Bucks County Playhouse. We had a director, Lauren Lataro, who works a lot on Broadway, and an associate director, a guy named Nick Corley, and we developed it. Originally it was probably two hours long, so I was rehearsing, and performing it. There were costume changes, and then we ended up doing it off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater. Yes, and it was a New York Times critics’ pick.

Q: You knew you were on the right route.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, so it was, and that was very exciting. It was probably November or December of 2021. And then Covid came back.

Q: Once you had Covid back, did that cause you to rethink things?

Candace Bushnell: No, the show ended, because I got Covid. Yes, first the stage manager got Covid, then several other people got it. That’s how the theater works. So a lot of shows shut down.

Q: I had Covid right at the beginning then I got the first vaccination. Were you already vaccinated, or you hadn’t been vaccinated?

Candace Bushnell: I was vaccinated.

Q: And you still got it?

Candace Bushnell: Well, people do.

Q: Having had Covid and having the show shut down, were there things that you decided to add, subtract, refine, change?

Candace Bushnell: No, no, no. The show is, I’ve done it all over the world, I think in 12 countries so far. I’ve done it twice at the London Palladium to a sold-out crowd. I’ve done it in South Africa. I have done it in Italy. I’ve done it in Denmark, Norway, Prague, Budapest, so I’ve done it in different countries. It’s the same, because, obviously, it’s in a different theater every time I do it. They have stage managers, et cetera, and people who do the lighting, and they want those, they want you to be perfect. there’s often a translation. They don’t want you to change a word.

Q: When you do the show, you’ve had it before all these different audiences. Do they react differently, or do they already have a conception given that “Sex in the City” is a global phenomenon?

Candace Bushnell: I’d say the audiences are pretty consistent, across all of these different countries. The audience is mostly women. They are well-heeled and intelligent. They’ve got it together. It’s a girls’ night out. They love it. They find the show really inspiring. They all pretty much laugh at the same things. there’s some parts that are maybe a little sad or poignant, and then there are other parts that are funny, and it’s pretty consistent.

Q: Did you find that when “Sex in the City” came out, first the column,  the book, then the TV series, did you find that you were being driven to become a more of, how do I say it, a primary personality, as opposed to somebody who was reflecting on other people, or did that all come very naturally?

Candace Bushnell: it all came very naturally. I always feel like writers are as interesting and Important as actors, so that was not ever, there wasn’t, I didn’t feel like I was reporting on people. I always felt like I had a voice, and that’s really the most important thing. Having a voice and a point of view.

Q: A lot of times writers don’t think of themselves as the primary person, but the person that’s reporting on them or in the background reflecting on them, or more insular, or not so much but more inward. Then there are other writers who are the most outward people you could ever meet. Salman Rushdie is somebody who’s a very stage-friendly person. You have these writers, personalities out there, happy to get in front of a crowd, and then there’s other writers that are terrified of it.

Candace Bushnell: No, I’m definitely in your camp.

Q: I came to New York in ’78, so we have a lot in common. We crossed a lot of paths and different people. Do you find that now that you’re doing this stage show and you’re rediscovering people you hadn’t seen in a long time? Or Do you find that people are coming to you that you never realized identified with Sex and the City to such a degree?

Candace Bushnell:  Sex and the City has a huge audience and I have had so many women from all over the world come up to me and tell me the impact that Sex and the City has had on their lives. It’s given them a different way to think, a different way to think about their lives , and that’s really probably one of the most rewarding aspects of it is that it’s touched so many women’s lives and it’s very important to so many women.

Q: Do you think it brought sex itself to the forefront in a way that hadn’t been done much before?

Candace Bushnell: It’s not about sex. It’s not about sex. It’s about real friendships, relationships, all of that. It’s about being an independent woman.

Q: I realize that for a lot of women, Sex and the City reframed the discussion about friends and how women react to each other as friends and how they bond or don’t bond or where conflicts come in. Do people come to you to be very confessional?

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I do have people who come up to me and say, have I got a dating story for you? I always want to hear it. I do. You know, it’s such, it’s really like such rich material. And, you know, I just wrote a piece for New York Magazine about dating over 60.

Q: I just read that.

Candace Bushnell: relationships are important. relationships are still, you know, one of the big topics of importance to people. Even if you don’t necessarily want to be in a relationship yourself, you’re still interested in relationships. That’s what I found. I could be wrong about that, but, so yes, people do come up to me and tell me their stories and I’m, honestly, usually fascinated. I find people fascinating.

Q: Do you think you’ve become a bit of a therapist to people not in necessarily a direct way, but when people meet you in a way you’ve helped them define themselves in some sense?

Candace Bushnell: Probably not. I’m usually pretty straightforward. Sometimes people say, what should I do to find a relationship? I just say, don’t bother. I can be sarcastic about it. I don’t think people really come to me as a therapist, but they do like to tell their stories. I think that’s wonderful.

Q: In some ways, you were able to, in writing those characters, describe archetypes of relationships or archetypes of dynamics that occur between women in various ways. Obviously, I’m only speaking secondhand, but I’ve met a few women in my day. I find that people react that way with “Sex in the City.” I have the complete DVD set, so I’ve watched a lot of episodes.

Candace Bushnell: Wow! That’s crazy!

Q: I interviewed the actors that played your character in the movie and also got to talk to Darren Star, the series creator.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, I love Darren.

Q: That was a fascinating day, It opened up my eyes to the series. When you wrote that New York Magazine article about dating after 60 what revelations did you find or have obviously thought about your men friends and whatnot? Have men said things to you since that article came out that you didn’t expect or did expect?

Candace Bushnell: As I like to say, I think that women have changed a lot and men really haven’t. I talked to a lot of men when I was writing “Sex and the City” and I always talked to a lot of men. They’re pretty straightforward about saying the things that women want to hear. The biggest change in dating, I think, has more to do with the fact that everybody’s on their phone all the time viewing their social media, but more importantly, it’s things like gaming and porn. I always say this, technology is largely created by men for men to take their money and I feel like a lot of men are lost to the internet.

Q: I have a different perspective with have one foot in the analog world and one foot in digital. In think you do as well. It’s a very different point of view in many ways.

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I think that that’s really what’s going on. The other thing is, one time, 60 years ago, people needed to be in relationships. There was no soup for one and now people can be single and they are single. I always look back to, I don’t know if you remember this, but, a family of five or six was sharing one bathroom. Now everybody has their own bathroom.

Q: They don’t have the big families like they used to.

Candace Bushnell: They don’t have big families and it’s much easier to be single now and so a lot of people are.

Q: In fact, millennials and younger people don’t have sex as much as our generation did.

Candace Bushnell: That’s supposedly true. I’ve heard that too. But you know what? There’s a lot of other things to do now.

Q: Do you think people are diverted by all these other interests and so sex has less prominence, and there’s less interest in procreation for sure.

Candace Bushnell: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that because I don’t know. It’s just a theory. There are many more things that take up time in people’s lives. You didn’t have to answer a whole bunch of emails or a whole bunch of texts back then. You didn’t have to be working 24-7. I remember weekends in the ’90s just spending the weekend with friends and not even thinking about work. Now, I think that would never happen.

Q: One of the lessons that certainly came out of the ‘70s, ‘80s, even into the ‘90s, is that you had to get out and meet people. You had to go to events and do things. You couldn’t just sit at home. you didn’t have the devices. You had to get on the phone and say, where am I going to meet up with other people and actually do it?

Candace Bushnell: Yes. You had to see people in real life…

Q: Getting back to your show, how many drafts did it go through before you finally refined it to the version that will be seen in December?

Candace Bushnell: I was tweaking it. It was six weeks working on it at Bucks County Playhouse. I was probably tweaking and changing it every day, 20, 40 drafts. It’s jut a constant kind of tweaking. But then, once I got it down, that’s what we use. It’s basically our bible. There’s like one version that’s a little bit shorter and then there’s a longer version that’s like 10 minutes longer, but it’s pretty much the same.

Q: Given that you’re performing, do you find yourself able to come back home and then want to write or do you find yourself having the performance bug in you and it makes it harder to sit down and write?

Candace Bushnell: I find it harder to sit down and write. It’s harder to find the time. I used to write for six hours a day, six days a week. Some days it’d be like eight hours. Now, I just think, do I feel like I have that much time?

Q: It’s good to go out because you’ve got to exercise yourself. You’ve got to make your body function in many ways.

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I also think it’s very healthy to go out and interact with other people. I still go out five days a week. Sometimes when I’m in the city I’ll go to a few different things. Sometimes I do things or if I’m in the Hamptons, you know, just go to dinner with some friends.

Q: I noticed your area code is in Connecticut?

Candace Bushnell: Yes, I had a house in Connecticut.

Q: Oh, but you don’t have the house anymore, so you’re back to being based in Manhattan?

Candace Bushnell: No, New York and Sag Harbor.

Q: Ah, I love Sag Harbor.

Candace Bushnell: It’s actually a really pretty good place to be.

Q: I got to appreciate Sag Harbor in many different ways. Are you involved with the movie theater there or any of those arts organizations? There’s some great ones out there like The Church  [a home for art and creativity on the East End in Sag Harbor]. I’ve been friendly with noted Sag Harbor artist and organizer April Gornick. I get notices of things going on out there. I keep wanting to get out there.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, she’s amazing. She’s done so much.

Q: She’s really in charge out there, very much so. Are you going to return with your show out there?

Candace Bushnell: Well, I did.  I probably do it once a summer. I did it at WestHampton Beach, and at the Church. I did it at Canoe Place Inn and at Guildhall. Usually, I do it once a summer.

Q: with this show that’s coming up, is this kind of a relaunching of a tour or setting yourself up to have more of a residency? What’s the plans following this show?

Candace Bushnell: Well, I have an agent who books these shows. it’s a whole different category. There are theaters all over the country, and they book various shows, and Adler Hall, and they have different programs, so they are one-night only kinds of performances.

For tickets go to: https://www.candacebushnell.com/news-and-events/

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