Actress Sarah Jessica Parker lands her dream gig as Booker Prize judge

NEW YORK – On New Year’s Eve 2022, American actress Sarah Jessica Parker was scrolling on Instagram when she saw a video by the Booker Prize, the prestigious British literary award, in which three judges talked about the craziness of reading 170 novels in seven months to pick that year’s nominees.

She quickly posted a comment: “Oh let me try!!!!”

Now, the star of hit TV series Sex And The City (1998 to 2004) and its spin-off And Just Like That... (2021 to present) has a chance to do just that.

On Dec 10, the Booker Prize Foundation, the award’s organiser, announced that Parker – a publisher as well as a Golden Globe winner – would sit on the 2025 judging panel, alongside authors Ayobami Adebayo, Kiley Reid and Chris Power. Roddy Doyle, the Irish novelist and screenwriter whose novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the 1993 Booker, will chair the jury.

Parker, 59, said that having the opportunity to judge “the greatest literary award” was “the thrill of a life” and “the golden ticket”, but feared she was not worthy of the role. Booker Prize judges are often academics, she said, and she had not attended college.

The Booker Prize often includes judges with surprising backgrounds. In 2021, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury and a major religious figure in Britain, helped give that year’s award to Damon Galgut’s The Promise. But actors like Parker have previously been absent, rarely having the time to sit on awards panels, even if they had the inclination.

She said she had a break in filming commitments, so was “thus far, feeling pretty optimistic about being able to do it”.

The foundation’s chief executive Gaby Wood said in a telephone interview that Parker was a perfect choice, being not only a “worldly, inquisitive, passionate reader”, but also a publisher of vibrant literary fiction through her SJP Lit imprint.

In an interview, Parker discussed her new role and what she felt made a good Booker winner.

Why do you say you are unqualified? You are a publisher of Booker-style fiction.

I think of judges as academics, learned, experienced in ways I am just not. I did not pursue higher education. I do not have any degrees. I separate my devotion to reading from those who can talk about it, criticise it, make judgments, have feelings that are worthy of public discourse.

All those ideas seem anathema to my relationship to books. Even when I went into publishing, I felt very nervous about people taking me seriously. I felt like an interloper and that I was constantly in a position of having to prove myself.

So, to be a judge on the Booker, which is the greatest literary award bestowed – it felt very daunting.

How will you get over that feeling?

I am just going to listen a lot. That is the way I have probably created a career outside of acting: just being surrounded by people who are experts and listening, listening, listening. And I am assuming that all of the judges are going to be kind and excited, and also feel the weight of these conversations. We are talking about people’s work. I want to be really thoughtful.

You have so much respect for authors. Are you ready to argue with your fellow judges?

I will learn soon enough if I can feel the confidence, and summon a more bold personality. But my assumption is that we are going to talk about books we love because they touched us, they made us feel things. The conversations are not going to be indictable. It is whether they are persuasive.

What will you be looking for in the winner?

It is what I like in publishing – the unfamiliar, being in a place far away, a place foreign to me, a voice that is unfamiliar in a country I have yet to visit, a continent where I am not at all well-travelled.

How will you be able to read so many novels, given work commitments?

I really thought about this. It is good timing because I am not on a set, but I will carve out every moment I can.

My mother is the reason my siblings and I are all readers. When I was little, she would drive car pool. She always had a book open on her lap under the steering wheel, and at the red light, she would look down and read, and wait for the car behind her to honk to tell her to go again.

So, that was how I grew up. Any opportunity to read, even if it is for two minutes, I will take it. NYTIMES