Secrets from Sex and the City 2

Unless you've been on a Cosmo bender for the past few months, you know that Sex And The City 2 is headed to a cinema near you, and with it, every red-blooded, Louboutin-loving lady in Australia.

The buzz began last northern summer during the first location shoots, when mobs of fans followed the trailers around New York City like rock groupies gunning for a seat on the bus. The internet lit up with predictions: Perez Hilton took polls on which ex-boyfriends would have cameos; gossip sites conducted CSI-like analyses of paparazzi shots (including one of Kim Cattrall holding a script that referenced Samantha's ex-beefcake Smith Jerrod); techie zealots shared their hopes for the movie with homemade "trailers" they had cut on their iMacs.

Now, as opening night is upon us, big questions loom: What will befall the now midlife fab four? Will the sequel bust the more than $415 million global chick-flick record set by the first? And the other multimillion-dollar question: Do Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall really hate each other?

Parker demurs on all counts, especially the last. The film's star and producer - who says she's seen to "every detail, every atom" of the movie since shooting wrapped in late 2009 - compares the behind-the-scenes tension to that of any office.

"When you're on set, you're working 90-hour weeks, you're never home, you're exhausted," says Parker. "There are times when all of us have been sensitive, and sometimes feelings get hurt. But I don't have any regrets about how I've treated people."

Cattrall maintains "the chemistry among the four of us is very strong". So why have stories of enmity followed the cast since before the first movie came out, when Cattrall reportedly made a fuss of Parker's salary being twice her own?

"Because the press has to put women in these boxes rather than show them as the movie portrays them: working together and being powerful," says Cattrall. "Things have to be explosive for no other reason than for people's imaginations."

Kristin Davis, the resident cheerleader - who with Parker organised a Thanksgiving Day dinner of couscous and turkey for members of the cast and crew in Morocco - laughs off the idea of infighting.

"There was a very strange piece in one of the tabloids that said Kim and I would eat in the restaurant of our hotel and not sit together, which cracks me up," she says, actually cracking up. "When I would get back from the set, I would go to the gym and get room service. I'm not a put-on-decent-clothes-and-go-to-the-hotel-restaurant person, but Kim is. The story was that we don't like each other. Ridiculous!"

The group has had disagreements, admits Cynthia Nixon. "It hasn't always been smooth sailing," she admits. "But the idea that we're somehow adversarial is ludicrous."

Perhaps to help dispel rumours of bickering, Parker and Cattrall walked the red carpet arm in arm in December at the London premiere of Parker's Have You Heard About The Morgans?

The actresses' recent successes might make it easy to be magnanimous. In the 12 years since the four archetypal single girls first sat down to brunch, the women playing them have transformed from variously successful actors to bona fide A-listers to, in some cases, icons.

Davis, once a Melrose Place bit player, has carved out a niche as the straight woman in screwball comedies (The Shaggy Dog, Deck The Halls and Couples Retreat).

Cattrall, with numerous Emmy nominations and one Golden Globe win to her credit, now picks among juicy stage and screen roles, recently winning over Brit critics as a comic bombshell in Noël Coward's Private Lives, after an against-the-grain role in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer.

"Sex And The City came along to me when I was in my 40s and already established as an actress," she says. "And I thought, 'Wow! I've done all of that, and now this on top of it!'"

Cattrall's also used her sex-goddess reputation to sell a pair of between-the-sheets advice books, Satisfaction: The Art Of The Female Orgasm (Grand Central Publishing, $27.95) and Sexual Intelligence (Little, Brown, $32.95).

Nixon wishes she'd kept a diary. "It was a whirlwind, and I'm sure I don't remember one-tenth of what happened," she says.

Since SATC began, the mother of two went from steadily working actress to stage star and indie mainstay (most recently in Lymelife, starring Timothy Hutton and Alec Baldwin). More dramatic was the change in her personal life: in 2003, Nixon split from her boyfriend of 15 years, began a relationship with a woman and, now engaged, is an outspoken proponent of gay marriage.

But it's Parker who has ridden the SATC wave to icon status, eclipsing her peers by a landslide. Along the way, she and husband Matthew Broderick became the parents of three children (including twins, now a year old, by surrogate), and she founded the discount fashion line Bitten. She also launched seven perfumes, became the face of Garnier and Gap (among others), starred in a handful of romantic comedies, and signed on as president and chief creative officer at legendary US label Halston - all in addition to steering the massive Ship SATC since 2001, when she became an executive producer.

But even Parker admits that Carrie's style was a challenge. "I've never revealed as much or been so daring or made quite as many triumphant mistakes as Carrie," she says. "But I'm bolder now than I would have been had I never played this part." Aren't we all?

But brace yourself. According to Field, for the sequel, a brand-new word will enter the lexicon of SATC style: modesty.

Thanks to a seven-week-long shoot in Morocco, expect a lot of breezy, diaphanous fabrics, bright colours that glow against the neutral desert landscape - and hats. "I used a lot of glamorous headwear," enthuses Field. "I loved it! This was the first time I wasn't told, 'No hats, no hats!'"

Another benefit of filming in inaccessible parts of the world was that it prevented camera-wielding fans from uploading every on-location moment to YouTube.

Yet despite producers' Pentagon-like attempts at secrecy, rumours abound: do the girls really chase Big across the Moroccan desert on camelback? Does the early-period Madonna outfit SJP wore outside Bergdorf Goodman department store last year suggest an '80s flashback? Is there a divorce? A baby? A white wedding for Samantha? Since there were few New York City street shoots and most scenes were instead filmed in a studio, plot points were well protected.

"It wasn't by design, but it helped," says Parker. "And we were cagey and tried to confuse people. I think we've kept the secrets that matter."

So the wedding dress Cattrall famously dashed up Fifth Avenue in last September? A red herring, admits Field.

"When we knew paparazzi were there, we put the actresses in disguises, to keep the surprise," she says. "The white dress was one of them."


For more on the stars of Sex and the City 2, see this month's issue of marie claire.