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How to Be a Good Girlfriend to a Gay Man

Ask yourself, “What would Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw do?” Then do the opposite.

Jeremy Helligar
6 min readSep 23, 2021
Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw and Willie Garson as Stanford Blatch on Sex and the City (Photo: HBO)

On September 21 when I heard the breaking news that actor Willie Garson, who played Stanford Blatch on Sex and the City, had died unexpectedly at age 57 after a short illness, like many fans of the series, I immediately thought about Stanford’s friendship with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw. Let’s face it: They were no Will and Grace.

Garson, who regularly popped up as Carrie’s gay BFF on the HBO series from 1998 to 2004 and appeared in the 2008 and 2010 movies, had recently shot scenes for the upcoming SATC reboot And Just Like That…, so we’ll get to see where Stanford and Carrie’s friendship has gone over the past decade. It really had nowhere to go but up.

I don’t know what kind of relationship Garson had with Sarah Jessica Parker in real life, but I hope it was better than the one Stanford had with Carrie on the show. I was never particularly fond of Carrie. She was incredibly self-centered and could be annoyingly cutesy at times, and her me-obsession was never more grating than in her scenes with Stanford. He always seemed to be an afterthought to her, an accessory to be trotted out occasionally, someone who was little more than a supporting player in her life story.

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Jeremy Helligar
Jeremy Helligar

Written by Jeremy Helligar

Brother Son Husband Friend Loner Minimalist World Traveler. Author of “Is It True What They Say About Black Men?” and “Storms in Africa” https://rb.gy/3mthoj

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