The Carrie Bradshaw we meet in The CW's prequel to Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries, is a young girl, just figuring out who she is, kind of living three lives at once. On one hand, she's a daughter and a sister and a surrogate mother, struggling with the recent loss of her mother and trying to keep her home life together. On the other hand, she's a friend and confidante and student, trying to grow up and experience the typical teenage firsts while attending classes and parties. But on the third hand you didn't even know you had to juggle, she is a young woman venturing into Manhattan for the first time, falling in love with the city and fashion and writing and nightlife.
"It's definitely about identity and finding each others' identity, but it's also about acceptance," AnnaSophia Robb, this incarnation's Carrie, said when LA TV Insider Examiner sat down with her in Los Angeles.
"Her friends influence her and her perspective on the world, and that's the nice thing-- it feels like real friendship!"
Robb's Carrie is "constantly maturing" but still also being pulled by various selves. It is exactly these complications that create the fascinating character Robb is excited to embody but also what sets the tone and the world for the series to unfold in which the fans will get equally lost.
Click here for our review of The Carrie Diaries pilot.
"You consult your friends when you have a decision to make or when you're going out with a guy you really life, and you bring your friends along. Walt and his arc in the series changes how Carrie views other people...and expectations about what Maggie will do [show] how sometimes you really don't know a person."
Sadly, the note about bringing friends along on a date was just an example and not a direct spoiler, as Robb shared that though Carrie's friends all know her summer fling-turned-school beau Sebastian (Austin Butler), the show isn't dealing with the typical teenage dating concerns.
"New York becomes more prominent because Carrie becomes more and more in that world and takes an internship, eventually, with a magazine," Robb said, noting that Carrie might be a little bit distracted at times.
"We have those dynamics definitely come into play and affect her relationship with Sebastian and how far she'll go in her relationship with Sebastian and how scary true love can become."
We don't want to get too far ahead of things because Sebastian and Carrie aren't even dating in the pilot; they're merely reconnecting after about a year of not seeing each other. Once they're thrown back into each others' lives and paths at school, though, sparks fly, and the attraction is certainly there, but Robb considered it more an "opposites attract" aspect that may inform some of Carrie's relationship missteps later in life.
"It's not necessarily a healthy desire for each other! It's more of a 'Why do I want you so bad? This is so confusing; this is not working, but I want it to work!' And so there's this constant 'I'm going to make this work'-- even if it's not meant to be," Robb said.
"There's something so much stronger about something that's more difficult. Why would you want anything that's easy!?"
The Carrie Diaries airs on The CW on Monday nights at 8 p.m. Be sure to watch our video interview with Robb to find out why she relates to Carrie Bradshaw as much as she does and more about the friendships in the series.
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