Sarah Jessica Parker Returns To Television With Divorce

Sarah Jessica Parker returns to television in a major role for the first time after the iconic Sex & The City series in the new HBO comedy show, Divorce.

In her latest show, Parker plays Frances, one half of a middle aged couple who finds that she has had enough of her marriage after a dramatic episode in a birthday party and seeks a divorce. Thomas Haden Church is the other half playing the role of Robert the cranky husband.

"Frances, my role, starts finding the situation unbearable, becomes candid about it, wants out, learns all the difficulties she'll face, and there's therapy to see if things are solvable. A lot gets revealed about Frances," said Parker about her role

The show captures the process of dismantling a marriage and its effect on the couple.  

 "Frances is the family breadwinner. She's the wife who works to support the husband and family and their fidelity. It's brutal, it's honest and it's funny," added Parker

Parker said she started developing the story four years ago.

"In my own personal world, I'd become interested in long-term relationships. I've seen its endless stages, separations, unhappiness, divorces, affairs, hidden relationships," said Parker. "I knew women relied on each other. They're often closer to a woman friend than to their husbands. Since all these iterations interested me, four years ago I went to HBO with this idea, and we began filming in March."

Parker has been at pains to disassociate her new character from that of her career-defining role of Carrie Bradshaw.

"This is not Carrie in the suburbs, Carrie the commuter," she told the New York Times. "And I kind of want to get ahead of that, so that there is not this giant heave of disappointment when people find the show is not ... that same buoyant kind of thing."

She also said her marriage bore no resemblance to the on screen struggles in the show. 

"You know, any job is very separate for me - it always has been," she said. "I love being consumed by a part that I'm playing. I don't relate to it."

Produced by Sharon Horgan, the show airs on HBO, Sundays 10 p.m.