Maureen Callahan says Sarah Jessica Parker called the paparazzi for her Amagansett reading photos

Maureen Callahan has a very local theory of celebrity photography: if Sarah Jessica Parker is photographed reading on a bench in Amagansett, somebody made a phone call. On The Megyn Kelly Show, Maureen Callahan said Parker’s cozy little book-and-tote-bag tableau wasn’t a candid Hamptons sighting, it was a flare shot into the celebrity-content sky.

This is not the Zapruder film. Nobody is presenting call logs. But Callahan’s argument is specific enough to be useful: paparazzi culture in the Hamptons is not the same as paparazzi culture outside Craig’s in Los Angeles. The fantasy is that a photographer just happened to be wandering around Amagansett and discovered Carrie Bradshaw communing with literature on a public bench. Callahan’s counterfantasy is much better: rich people pretending not to know they are being photographed while arranging their face into “oh, me?”

Paparazzi do not roam around the East End of Long Island, they just do not. It is not done. It is not accepted.

That is the whole column, really, but Callahan keeps seasoning the pan. Her read depends on a tiny bit of geography and a lot of social surveillance. Amagansett, she explains, is not Times Square with hydrangeas. The benches are not meant to host a whimsical one-woman adaptation of The Summer I Turned Literate. They are places to regroup, wait for a shopper, make a call, put down bags, then move along like a normal person with iced coffee and sunscreen in her bloodstream.

So, if these people get photographed, this is sum and substance, what I’m trying to get to, is because they called the paparazzo. Okay?

The bench is the tell

Callahan’s funniest bit of evidence is not the alleged photographer. It is the bench. In her telling, the bench itself practically testifies against Parker. A public bench on Main Street is not a reading nook. It is not a beach house porch. It is not a Nancy Meyers third act. Sitting there with a “big fat book” and tote bags, glowing with available serenity, turns the street into a set.

You know, it’s like you take it you’re there to take a break, you maybe have a phone call to make, you’re putting your bags down for a second while you regroup.

This is where Callahan’s accusation moves from media criticism to theater criticism. The performance is not that Parker was photographed. Celebrities get photographed. The performance is the studied casualness, the book as prop, the tote bags as moral proof, the bench as proof of accessibility. Look, a star, but also a reader. A reader, but also a star. The kind of image designed to look accidental while screaming personal brand.

Callahan also ties the moment to Parker’s larger public presentation, especially the ocean-view Instagram reel as lifestyle flex. That part is less airtight and more grudge-with-a-view, but it does explain why Sarah Jessica Parker bothers people in a way that exceeds the actual offense. Parker’s post-Sex and the City image is built on taste, charm, literary-adjacent sophistication, and the eternal suggestion that the viewer should feel lucky to glimpse the hem of the kaftan.

So, she’s looking for attention. She’s looking it’s never enough attention, never enough.

Plausible, not proven

The fair verdict: Callahan’s claim is plausible, and also unproven. Celebrity media runs on arranged candids, friendly agencies, publicists with burner-level discretion, and stars who want privacy right up until a flattering outfit needs a witness. But a plausible machine is not the same thing as proof that Parker herself placed the call.

Still, the suspicion sticks because it’s grounded in a recognizable celebrity ritual. The “candid” photo that looks too clean. The public location that feels selected. The book that somehow reads as both prop and alibi. If Callahan is wrong, Parker simply had a peaceful little reading moment in public and got unlucky. If Callahan is right, the paparazzi shot is not an invasion. It’s content with a tote bag.