It's as iconic as Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air. Carrie Bradshaw, a grown woman casually wearing a tutu in the daytime on a busy New York street, gets splashed by a bus bearing a provocative image of her, boasting: "Carrie Bradshaw knows good sex (and isn't afraid to ask)."
Perfect, right? You get what the show is about in less than 30 seconds: a young gal in the Big City with a quirky sense of style who writes about sex. But that wasn't the original opening credit sequence to Sex and the City, as Entertainment Weekly found out:
It's a little underwhelming, though the Busy Working Woman of the '90s in a business skirtsuit and sneakers is a nice touch.
"There were two wardrobes. One was the tutu, and we did one pass where Sarah Jessica was wearing a blue dress and didn't get splashed; instead, she trips when she sees the ad," creator Darren Star told EW. "In my mind, it was a nod to The Dick Van Dyke Show, but we didn't use it. It's in the archives."
Costume designer Patricia Field found the tutu in a $5 bin on a showroom floor, then recreated four versions of it. But according to Field, the producers just didn't get it. "Sarah Jessica and I were fighting for it, and Darren said, 'Okay, but I want other outfits as possibilities.'"
Looking back on it, Star has nothing but praise for the balletic choice "because, in a way, Carrie's dancing through her life in New York."
Besides, he eventually got his Dick Van Dyke moment:
