Candace Bushnell whose novel about four Manhattan women and their love lives inspired a TV phenomenon, has revealed she’ll be receiving no royalties from the deal secured by Netflix recently to air the six seasons of Sex and the City on its platform.
Bushnell was originally paid $100,000 by HBO for the screen rights to her novel, which spawned the TV series that ran from 1998 to 2004, and a franchise now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And she was forthright in sharing her opinion on the new deal going forward, telling The Times of London newspaper:
“All of these men who are in charge of things, they just keep moving these cards around to make money because every time they move the cards around somebody’s skimming,” she says. “The way men do business is a Ponzi scheme.”
She added: “The percentage of women in the 1 per cent who made their own money is about 3.5 per cent, and that’s shocking.”
Besides the Netflix deal, the franchise is ploughing ahead with a third season of its sequel … And Just Like That, following the lives of Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda (Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon). Kim Cattrall, who played sex bomb Samantha in the original series, famously opted out of the reunion, amid a long-simmering feud between her and Parker.
Meanwhile, Bushnell is taking her experiences on the road, in a stage show full of anecdote and memoir, called True Tales of Success and Sex and the City, most recently in Palm Beach – prompting her to confirm that, back in the 2000s, she and the area’s most famous resident Donald Trump were friendly, although they no longer speak. She reports him complimenting her back in the day on “the best hair in New York”, and she added: “He can be very charming if he wants to be. Obviously, that’s how he’s got where he is.”