Summary

• Carrie Bradshaw is portrayed differently in the prequel series, The Carrie Diaries, with a more optimistic and innocent personality.
• The portrayal of Carrie's past relationships, especially her first time, is notably different between Sex And The City and The Carrie Diaries.
• Carrie's family background, including her parents and sister, is altered significantly in The Carrie Diaries compared to Sex And The City.

When the public first discovered a prequel to The Carrie Diaries would be on The CW, it was evident that the stories would be a tad altered. While the HBO series focused on Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her friends navigating New York in their thirties, The Carrie Diaries saw Carrie (AnnaSophia Robb) as a high school student getting her first taste of the big city.

However, what fans didn't know going into the prequel series was that most of Carrie's backstory would pretty much be changed entirely for The Carrie Diaries. Though the shows were meant to tell the same consequential narrative, the discrepancy between the two might have made more sense as two non-related stories. That's largely because each series adapted a novel with different showrunners and writer's rooms, which meant different aspects of Carrie's story were important to those telling it.

Carrie's Personality

Teenage Carrie Knows What She Wants

In Sex And The City, the star of the show is portrayed as kind of a mess and some would even argue that Carrie Bradshaw's character has not aged well either. She is a 30-something woman who is trying her best to navigate the dating world, all while balancing her writing column centering around relationship advice. However, Carrie is represented quite differently in The Carrie Diaries.

Teenage Carrie seems more sure of herself and what she wants, much more than her older self. In the prequel series, Carrie is arguably more likable, between her plucky optimism and her ability to see life through rose-colored glasses. She was even at times depicted as an innocent rule-follower who normally had all her ducks in a row, which the older Carrie character didn't really emulate.

High School Sweetheart

They Changed The Name Of Her Boyfriend

The first the audience heard of Carrie's high school boyfriend was when she told Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha about Jeremy Wade at lunch in Sex And The City. She mentioned that he was her first boyfriend, and they shared a sweet and innocent love that ended over potential opportunities with other people. However, fans of The Carrie Diaries only know of Sebastian Kidd as her first high school love.

Fans always wondered why the writers for The Carrie Diaries didn't at least keep names consistent with the Sex And The City narrative, but it's possible they wanted to create a different universe altogether with the shows being staffed by completely different creative teams. It's obvious that a lot of the HBO content would not have been suitable for the CW, so it's entirely probable that the writers for The Carrie Diaries wanted to switch things up and do their own thing.

Carrie's First Time Story

Teenage Carrie Had A More Special First Experience With Sex

The sensational HBO show depicted Carrie's "first time" very differently than The Carrie Diaries, even by mentioning different people. Older Carrie recalls her first time having sex being an extremely casual hookup in a locker room, whereas younger Carrie's experience was slightly more meaningful for her. In The Carrie Diaries, Carrie valued her virginity a lot more and made sure to wait until she was sure she was ready, having sex with someone she loved. It's evident that this version of Carrie couldn't have been further from how older Carrie carried herself in Sex And The City.

Of course, those fans who want both shows to have a more cohesive story could easily explain this away by reminding others that in Sex And The City, Carrie is the one telling the story, not to an audience, but to a group of friends. In The Carrie Diaries, her stories are for herself, in her own diary. In Sex And The City, sexual escapades are often discussed, so it would make sense for Carrie to embellish her own.

Carrie's Morals

The Good Girl Stereotype And The Confident Adult Woman

Though it's a given that ideas about morals can change and adapt with age, the difference between the two versions of Carrie Bradshaw is quite discernable. On one hand, high school Carrie is portrayed as quite the conservative and almost stereotypical "good girl" who is afraid to take too big of a risk, and on the other hand, thirty-something Carrie is more open with her sexuality and willing to engage with anyone she has an attraction to.

Fans didn't think the stark contrast in Carrie's personality was realistic, even factoring in character evolution. It's not entirely practical to have such a complete change of pace in Carrie's own ideas about morality, much less her whole personality and how she carries herself. However, one thing that remains is the fact that Carrie is relatable when it comes to relationships, no matter what side of the dating spectrum she was truly on.

Carrie's Parents

Two Completely Different Family Dynamics

It's a pretty big plot point in The Carrie Diaries that her mom ed away due to cancer, leaving her dad alone to navigate parenting as a single father. Carrie's mom's death hit her hard and she even carries around her mother's beloved purse. However, the audience learns in the fourth season of Sex And The City that her father walked out on her and her mother when she was only five years old, creating a completely different parental narrative.

Once again, this major difference in plot points further proves that the two versions of Carrie could not be more different. Though both plots have a loss of a parent in common, it's no wonder that these diverse upbringings produce such different representations of Carrie. Carrie losing her mother to an illness as a teen is very different from Carrie knowing that her father left her family when she was five.

Carrie's Sister

In Sex and The City, Carrie Is An Only Child

Another big inconsistency between the two shows is the fact that Carrie's younger sister Dorrit plays a big part in The Carrie Diaries plot, meanwhile, Carrie never mentions any siblings throughout the whole of the Sex And The City series. Just like the conflicting parent storylines, siblings also play a huge role in family dynamics.

It's evident that HBO's version of Carrie acts as a typical only child, as the world has always revolved around her, hence her "main character" syndrome despite the series being an ensemble show. Alternatively, younger Carrie had to step up as the responsible sibling after the death of her mother and look after her younger sister during her rebellious antics. Dorrit is initially portrayed as the rebellious one in the family until Carrie begins to understand her sister a bit better.

Carrie's School Friends

Carrie's Friendships Changed Throughout Her Life

Carrie never discusses old friends in Sex And The City, mostly because it seems that Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha are the best friends she could ever have. There are no glimpses into the friendships of her past, Yet in The Carrie Diaries, Mouse, Walt, Maggie, and Carrie seem like the best of friends who would stick together forever.

This is yet another contrast in the plot that raises the question of why Carrie ignored an additional part of her past, given the fact that friendship is the most important thing to her. Though it's common for friendships to outgrow each other as people get older, it would have been nice to hear about Carrie's old friendships and even see her catching up with some of them, but it's clear that the way she treats relationships is among one of many problems Sex and the City fans have with Carrie.

It's also an odd discrepancy between the two shows since one of Carrie's Sex And The City friends actually crosses paths with her The Carrie Diaries friends in the prequel series.

Carrie Meeting Samantha

In The Carrie Diaries, Samantha Is The Cousin Of Carrie's School Rival

One of the direct conflicts between the two shows occurs because it was stated in Sex And The City that Carrie met Samantha last among her older friends, but in The Carrie Diaries, that wasn't the case. The two met when Carrie was quite young, as Samantha was working in a bar and the cousin of Carrie's school rival, Donna, when Carrie was working and living in New York in The Carrie Diaries season 2. Miranda and Charlotte, however, did not appear in the series.

While fans were thrilled to see a character crossover like this, viewers wondered why the writers yet again altered the canon of the two's friendship. Perhaps the creators of the show wrote in her appearance, knowing that Samantha is a fan-favorite main character and knew that the audience would love it, and they were definitely right.

Carrie's Influences

Adult Carrie Didn't Have A Mentor Like Larissa Loughlin

Big-time fashion editor Larissa Loughlin serves as a vital mentor to Carrie's professional and glamorous writing career in Manhattan, and their relationship even plays a big part in The Carrie Diaries. However, this serves as another gap in HBO's version of Carrie and her backstory.

Fans would think that they would gain access to Carrie's past by learning how she got into writing and who helped her along the way, but it seems that Sex And The City mainly served as a future-first plotline instead of hashing out the past and giving fans a solid foundation for Carrie. Viewers would have loved for older Carrie to have a colleague or even a mentor in the show, but it's possible that the HBO writers wanted to leave a majority of her professional background up to fans' imagination.

Background

The Audience Only Knows Carrie By Her Behavior

While the specifics of Carrie's background in the CW series have already been discussed, fans found it even weirder that they almost knew nothing about Carrie's character arc in the HBO show. Viewers would have loved to know more about where she came from and how she grew into the person she was in Sex And The City.

Some would argue that fans don't need to know the little details about her upbringing, considering the audience does learn so much about Carrie through her patterns of behavior with her friends and her tendency to sabotage romantic relationships. However, it's undeniable that Carrie Bradshaw is an iconic character, and at the end of the day, fans can't get enough of her and her story, whether they're watching it play out in the original Sex And The City, the prequel series The Carrie Diaries, or even, the sequel series And Just Like That.