Candace Bushnell, Real-Life Carrie Bradshaw, Is Creating a Reality Dating Show for Women in their 50s

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published 30 November 2023

Author and journalist Candace Bushnell has had success in television in the past—a column she once wrote for The New York Observer called Sex and the City was made into a show on HBO you may have heard of—but now Bushnell is moving into a new lane: an unscripted dating show.

Variety reports that the unscripted dating show is in development and will be based off of Sex and the City, which was first a column and then a book comprised of the columns, which ran from 1994 to 1996. The HBO series with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis ran from 1998 to 2004, and Bushnell is the real-life Carrie Bradshaw, played by Parker. Bushnell invented the Carrie character as her alter ego while writing the column.

The new dating show is in development at Bunim/Murray, Variety reports, the same production company behind reality shows like The Real World, Road Rules, Project Runway, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It will be titled Is There Still Sex in the City?, which is also the title of Bushnell’s 2019 book about her experience of dating post-divorce in her fifties. (Bushnell was married from 2002 to 2012 to Charles Askegard, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet who was 10 years her junior.)

Per Variety, “the program will follow four friends in their fifties as they navigate the immersive dating experience in a ‘love do-over,’ where they trade their busy city lives for a ‘dating utopia.’” The logline of the show reads “They’ll live together in a cozy country chateau where they’ll have their pick of a different group of men in each episode. They’ll try the boy toys, sample a senior age player, be romanced by the rich guys, and even get to flirt with their fantasy man. But in the end, who will really steal their hearts, and will our ladies be able to bring the sex back to the city?”

Bunim/Murray will begin shopping the series out to potential buyers next month.

“Fifty-something women (and above) are the hottest new dating demographic, and I should know, I am one of them,” Bushnell said. “Over the decades, I’ve dated men of all ages, and I’m so excited to be working on a show that combines my passion for relationships with the chance to help women, like me, navigate a love do-over.”

In addition to Sex and the City, Bushnell has written eight other books, most of them fiction. Two of them, Lipstick Jungle and The Carrie Diaries, became network TV series on NBC and The CW, respectively. In addition to the forthcoming dating show, Bushnell will take her one-woman show “True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City” to England, Italy, and Canada in 2024.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.

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