“Sex and the City” Screenwriters Liz Tucillo and Amy Harris

MakingOf: So tell us about how you ladies met?

(AMY  HARRIS): Well Liz and I met while we were working as writers on “Sex and the City.” And um, I think I’d been there…well I’d been there since the very beginning, but I’d moved onto the writing staff a season before “Lizzle” showed up. And, um, we’re like a very, intensely, tight nit group of women. Really the friendships on that show are, I think, our friendships, personified.

MO: Tell us about the writing process for something like “Sex and the City,” how many writers were on the show?

(LIZ TUCILLO): Seven.

MO: And how does that work? Do you sit in a room and you…

(LIZ): We had the greatest writer’s room!

(AMY): In the world.

(LIZ): Because you did get actually paid in the beginning; Like, in the beginning of each season, you did get paid to talk about your love life because a lot of the time was spent just really talking about what was going on in our love lives, because most of us were single. And Michael would just be sitting there…

(AMY): Taking in stuff…

(LIZ): Digging up the earth, loosening the dirt, just sort of seeing what the themes were that kept coming up and…

(AMY): And what people were talking about, what we were feeling and…

(LIZ): We’d start fighting about it and start crying about it and, you know, ‘cause we’d be talking, talking, talking, and then all of a sudden, there’d be this huge eruption and then everybody would go crazy.

(AMY): And it was an interesting thing; why, I think, at the end, by season 4, the staff didn’t really change that much in terms of who was in it, ‘cause it was a very safe space. Because you were mining your own life, every day, and to feel like you were revealing stuff to professional “colleagues,” it would have felt so dangerous in a way and this was just a very safe environment. So, in that way, it was an incredibly democratic. We’re all just talking, talking, talking, and then these themes sort of came up and we had the four characters names down this way and, you know, the episodes going this way, and we would start figuring out what Carrie’s line was and then all the other girls’ story lines and then we would start figuring out themes and what specifically can happen and stuff sort of logically started, sometimes, falling into place. And like, the episode I always think of that really cleanly says this is, um, and it is an episode people love, is “My Motherboard, Myself.” Which was Miranda’s mother passes away and Carrie’s computer breaks and she has to go to tech support and it’s a whole episode about support. So everybody’s relationships are moving in terms of the arcs and the plots to the season, but the theme of support really became, like, Miranda has to look for the right bra to wear at her mother’s funeral and this woman is trying to help her find the right support. It became very clear what the themes were and that really felt like what we did on almost every episode, was just try to find out how to talk thematically about what people were going through.

MO: So once you finalize the theme, then it becomes…who does the line writing? Who’s writing the dialogue?

(LIZ): Michael always, in his mind, he’d come into the season knowing where he wanted to see the ladies go. He came up with a lot of ideas.

(AMY): He had a lot of ideas, but he was also willing to hear, “I don’t like that,” or…

(LIZ): He would sort of keep it to himself sometimes to see what was coming up and knew where he wanted it to go, but then it would change.

(AMY): And we would always talk at the beginning of the season, like, what do you want to see? Like, the fifth season was a kind of dark, post 9/11 season, that clearly showed our, kind of, collective New York sadness. And so like, when we came back in for season six, we knew what we wanted to see: a romp, a rollercoaster, excitement, positive, optimism! And then we would, sort of, talk about why we felt that at that point and then we would kick off, sort of, how the season was going to reflect what we were feeling. But Michael would always be like, “Oh, you have lead on this episode, you’re gonna write this one.” And sometimes it was because you pitched, and that’s why. And sometimes it would be, a sense that you would click into the emotions of it.

(LIZ): Some days, it would be like, I wonder if he’s gonna say I get this one!

(AMY): Right. Is this gonna be my episode?!

(LIZ): And then it’s like, it is yours.

(AMY): It was very exciting.

(LIZ): “Amy do you want to take this one?” YES.

MO: Is it all women writers? Other than Michael?

(AMY): Yes.

(LIZ): The assumption in show-biz or in Hollywood or whatever would be like, “All those women in a room together?! What a nightmare!” And it was the best sorority you could ever be in.

(AMY): Joyous. It was really incredible.

(LIZ): It really had a lot to do with Michael, it was odd, the people he picked, the women he picked, and the tone he set in the room, which was just always positive and lovely, and gentlemanly in a sense.

(AMY): The whole thing is, you can turn in a first draft on a “Sex and the City,” and you know, “it’s good, it’s not great,” and the notes you’re gonna get are gonna make it better. The table read, like, you always knew in the best way possible, like, I never felt, even in the episodes that I wrote, I felt like, they were mine, but they were everybody’s and I felt like everybody’s episodes, I had so much to do. You just had so much ownership of the whole process, and I think it just made for kind of, a great product.

MO: Are you involved in the “Sex and the City” movie at all?

(AMY): I’m so minimally involved, but I went to the table read and have been going to set and looking at some stuff. But I’ve been looking at a few minutes of the film cut together. It’s nothing official. But it’s going to be very exciting. This one’s a romp, the other one was a very beautiful, more emotional, and people were very surprised at how emotional and sad and still dealing with the things that all women deal with but it’s a bit more of a fun romp of a movie. I think people will be very satisfied.