Sarah Jessica Parker’s voice once brought Carrie Bradshaw’s columns to life, offering fleeting glimpses into the glamorous, fast-moving world of “Sex and the City.” Parker’s voice returned — not with musings on fictional love, but with real reflections drawn from her own life — Friday evening in the Josephine Louis Theater.

Parker’s appearance was part of the School of Communication’s quarterly Dialogue with the Dean series, which invites emerging and established influential communicators to campus.

The event quickly sold out in early April when tickets went up, and students packed the auditorium and accompanying Zoom webinar. A smaller event was held for School of Communication students a few hours earlier, Communication sophomore Lili King said.

“It was so cool to hear about all the things she does outside of acting,” King said. “I didn’t know much of her as a person, so it was nice to hear about her stances, and she was just super personable and encouraging.”

In conversation with School of Communication Dean E. Patrick Johnson, Parker shared meditations on her childhood, career, motherhood and love for literature.

While Carrie Bradshaw lived among designer shoes and Manhattan brunches, Parker grew up in a crowded Ohio home, where she learned resilience early on.

“Not having money growing up, I really feel as if it was a huge gift in many, many ways,” Parker said. “I had such a rich life as a child, in my mom and dad’s company and as one of eight kids. It was very rich, it was full and it was filled with art and music and theater and dance and lots of conversation and politics.”

Parker credited her upbringing with shaping her work ethic. She made her Broadway debut at age 11 in “The Innocents,” landing a role in “Annie” a year later. While she first played an orphan in the ensemble, she eventually stepped into the title role, which she described as a formative experience.

After her time on Broadway, Parker transitioned to television, playing a nerdy high schooler on the short-lived sitcom, “Square Pegs.” She said she feels lucky that the hardest moments of her young career took place in the theater, where she was shielded from the intense scrutiny often faced by child stars in television and film. Working in theater first gave her the freedom to be “awkward” and “unexamined” in ways many child actors can’t be, she said.

Although working in television could feel slow and repetitive, Parker said she appreciated the chance to experiment with each take — a freedom she didn’t have in live theater, where she only had one shot to get it right.

Despite embodying one of television’s most iconic fashion obsessives, Parker said she has always been more pragmatic than Carrie Bradshaw. She shares her character’s love of shoes, but many of her higher heels stay tucked away nowadays.

While Parker has swapped stilettos for more sensible shoes, she said her taste in drinks has finally caught up with Carrie’s. After years of pretending to sip cosmopolitans — really just cranberry juice — on set, she now understands the appeal.

“(Parker) felt so relatable throughout the conversation, but I was in such awe the entire time because all I could hear was Carrie Bradshaw speaking,” Medill sophomore Anaya Roman said.

Parker said her relationship with Carrie has remained mostly the same since “Sex and the City’s” premiere in 1998. She said she still delights in playing the character, flaws and all, in the “Sex and the City” 2021 revival, “And Just Like That…”

The revival follows the characters as they move from the complicated lives of their 30s to the even more complicated realities of their 50s. Aging alongside her character, Parker said the show explores questions she’s come to ask and answer in her own life.

“There’s been plenty of stories to tell. It doesn’t surprise me, because I know a lot of women my age, and they’re very interesting, and their lives are colorful and unpredictable and surprising and predictable and sad and happy, and as many things as any other age group,” Parker said.  “(There’s) a kind of independence financially, and marriages can be over or children are gone, so there’s a whole new chapter waiting to be.”

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