Sarah Jessica Parker wants to take a new direction in her career, didn’t you know? So instead of playing the upwardly mobile, slightly spoiled Upper East Side New York woman Carrie Bradshaw, as she did in Sex and the City, she’ll be playing a whole new character in the movie The Ivy Chronicles… an upwardly mobile, slightly spoiled Upper East Side New York woman. Oh, but this one has kids. See, totally different!

I hate to rag on Parker too much for her choice of a new project, which The Reporter says is in development at Warner Bros. based on Karen Quinn’s novel. After all, Parker has spent the last 10 years building her image as a savvy New Yorker, and it makes sense that that would be the kind of role offered to her. But when she talks about wanting to distance herself from her seminal TV character and then takes a role like this, it’s hard to take that claim seriously.

In this movie Parker will play Ivy, a newly divorced woman who moves downtown to a cheaper apartment with her children and starts a business for similarly wealthy moms who want to get their kids into good preschools. See, maybe non-New Yorkers can enjoy watching this kind of self-absorbed wealth onscreen, but those of us who see it every day have probably had it up to here. Sarah Jessica, I like you, I really do, but if you continue playing money-obsessed women with nothing in common with the women who are your fans, you’re going to lose them.