'Sex and the City' gets a prequel: 'The Carrie Diaries'

'Sex and the City' gets a prequel: 'The Carrie Diaries'

 PASADENA, CALIF. â€" For all the fun on which the frothy new “Carrie Diaries” is built, its creators say it will also explain why Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex and the City” character had such a hard time with men.

“The Carrie Diaries,” a prequel to the cult HBO hit “Sex and the City,” premieres Monday night at 8 on the CW.

“We were very careful about how we got Carrie to this point, where she has such trouble in relationships,” writer and executive producer Amy B. Harris told TV critics here Sunday. “She is damaged. You’ll see how screwed up she is about embracing a good guy.”

In general, though, said Harris, the show will have “a lot of fun” exploring Carrie’s backstory, like the way she finally meets the women who would become her “Sex and the City” posse.

Harris said it will also play with the fact that Carrie's having a lot of her early New York experiences at a time when she's technically too young to be drinking at places like Indochine.

“She’ll be hiding her age a lot,” said Harris. “We have fun with it. Especially when it blows up in her face.”

Eighties culture and the ’80s look will also be a big part of the show, though executive producer Josh Schwartz admitted things like Atari had to be explained to some of the younger cast members.

“You feel like you’re doing ‘Downton Abbey,’” Schwartz joked.

AnnaSophia Robb, who plays Bradshaw, said she personally loves the ’80s. “It was such a romantic time,” she says. “And we have fun with the big boomboxes.”

There has been some general discussion about whether most Carrie Bradshaw fans are now older than the CW’s target audience of women 18-34, and CW President Mark Pedowitz acknowledged that might be the case.

“We do hope to attract people who watched the original series, for whom Carrie Bradshaw is an icon,” he said. “But it’s also a coming-of-age story, and those are timeless.”