Maureen Callahan says Sarah Jessica Parker will never get another acting job of consequence

Maureen Callahan didn’t just dislike Sarah Jessica Parker’s commencement speech. She treated it like evidence in a career-crimes trial, then delivered the sentence: Parker “will never get another acting job of any consequence.”

That is the kind of line that makes The Megyn Kelly Show hum, half media criticism, half open-handed slap. Callahan’s target was Parker’s tone in a graduation address, especially the way the actress framed the students as occupying her mind before the speech. But the real charge was bigger and nastier: Parker, in Callahan’s telling, is still performing importance while being permanently handcuffed to Carrie Bradshaw.

She says she was haunted by them, which is a very, I’m going to say, inelegant at best, insensitive, and um really disrespectful thing at worst to say to this group of kids, you were haunting me.

The word that set Callahan off was not some profanity or culture-war flare-up. It was “haunted.” Then came “burden.” Celebrity commencement speeches are already a dangerous genre, because they ask famous people to pretend they are there to confer wisdom rather than launder their own mythology in academic lighting. Parker’s language gave Callahan exactly the opening she wanted.

Sincerely, sincerely graduates, even though we’ve just met, you have become, over these last few months, cohabitants of my life, a great part of my waking thoughts, a constant distraction, and a beautiful burden.

The Carrie Bradshaw problem

Callahan’s read is brutal because it identifies the trap of Sarah Jessica Parker with almost comic efficiency. Parker can stand at a lectern, speak earnestly to graduates, and try to land somewhere between literary and maternal, but the cultural subtitle still reads: Carrie has thoughts. Carrie has shoes. Carrie has a townhouse. Carrie has another monologue.

This speech is all about Sarah Jessica Parker. It’s all about her.

Is that entirely fair? Not really. Parker has worked since childhood, as Callahan herself notes, and the idea that she “didn’t earn that using her brain” is the kind of insult that sounds satisfying right up until you remember acting is, in fact, work. Also, surviving decades of fame without turning into a cautionary TMZ slideshow requires some kind of operational intelligence.

Still, Callahan is not wrong about the gravitational pull. Sex and the City is not just a credit on Parker’s résumé. It is a weather system. Every public Parker appearance drags in Carrie, fashion, money, Manhattan aspiration, and the question of whether the actress is speaking as herself or as a prestige cable afterimage in expensive shoes.

A roast disguised as media criticism

The funniest part of Callahan’s attack is how quickly it escalates. She begins with etiquette, was it rude to tell graduates they haunted you? Then she moves to sincerity, was this speech about them or about her? Then she hits the big red button and turns the whole thing into a post-Carrie career obituary.

She will never get past Carrie Bradshaw. Ever. She’ll never get over her. She’ll never get past it. She will never get another acting job of any consequence. So now we’re acting like we’re an intellectual.

That final turn, “acting like we’re an intellectual,” is the real sting. Callahan isn’t only saying Parker is overidentified with a role. She’s saying Parker is trying to trade on cultural capital she doesn’t possess, to move from beloved actress to Serious Person at the podium. That is a harsher claim than “bad speech.” It is a claim about class performance, celebrity self-mythology, and the strange American habit of asking actors to become philosophers for 18 minutes in front of sweating parents.

The prediction is too sweeping. The insult is too neat. But the image is hard to shake: Sarah Jessica Parker at a graduation ceremony, trying to transcend Carrie Bradshaw, while Callahan stands offstage with a pin, waiting for the balloon to drift close enough.