Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick and Fame



Being an egoistic alpha blogger of the first magnitude, The Corsair has always wondered, in a vaguely perverse and hugely mishchievous manner, if -- ah, if only if -- if there was ever any, ah, tension in the Broderick-Parker:: Parker-Broderick household with regards to celebrity.

Is Nathan Lane's second fiddle sophisticated enough to slough off, with New Age sensitive guy elan, the fact that his wife is so much more famous than he? Norman Maine from A Star is Born is broached in Arts and Leisure of The Great Grey Lady, and one can faintly imagine Broderick, looking over the ocean, like Ferris in the museum, contemplating his superfamous mate and the waters of the briny deep:

"Q. Were you ever tempted to take a part on 'Sex and the City'?

"A. Every now and then they'd say, 'Hey, you can be the premature ejaculator,' but it never worked out with my schedule. Which may be good. I'm not strong enough in my own self to play the premature ejaculator on my wife's show.

"Q. So, O.K., you're married to someone superfamous. But you're not going end up a drunken suicide like Norman Maine in 'A Star Is Born.'

"A. It's one of my favorite movies, but no. Though I like to play that for effect.

"Q. There must be things to like about being married to such a big star.

"A. You get free sweaters and iPods. We went out for the Emmys, and there was a whole room at the hotel where a person follows you around with a sack, and you say, 'I want that watch, that video game.' Boy, people will hate me!

"Q. I love that they provide you with a graft wrangler.

"A. Except it's all for her, not me, actually. I'm the parasite! Oh, God, is this whole article going be about what a little nothing I am?"

The Corsair cringes.

"Q. You're actually quite famous, intermittently.

"A. It's pretty much impossible to play that perfectly, because it keeps going one way or the other. You keep sliding into, ''Uh-oh, I haven't worked in a year and a half,' or, 'I'm on all these bus posters, and everybody thinks I'm the milquetoast guy from The Stepford Wives.' ...

"Q. Did you want to be famous? You're the child of a well-known actor, James Broderick.

"A. Yeah, but he was not superfamous. When he did the TV series 'Family, he got a little bit famous, but it used to annoy me. We'd go to a baseball game, and people would come up and bother him. It was not a good thing in my family to be a 'personality.'"

Hmm. A "personality" as in Carrie Bradshaw?

Rush and Molloy excavate this topic further:

"Sarah Jessica Parker leads a life quite the opposite of her former 'Sex and the City' alter ego, Carrie Bradshaw.

"'How many times have you seen me out?' she asked us Thursday. 'You haven't, because I'm not. You never see me at premieres. I don't go to parties.'

"'I am home all the time. I have certain things I made professional commitments to [go to], but everyone seems to think my husband [Matthew Broderick] is home and I'm out, but it's so not true.'"

Touchy, touchy, Little Miss Famous. Australia's TheAge, which notes that Broderick -- no slouch himself, at least in the bread earner department -- got paid $140,000 a week from his recent Broadway musical stint in The Producers. But, contrary to popular estimation, "cream" and, so to speak, "juice" are non commensurable magnitudes. Check it:

"The last time Broderick attempted to buy tickets to a show for James, a performance by another children's music phenomenon Raffi, the actor came up empty-handed.

"'My sister took her children to see Raffi when he was in New York and I called my assistant to try to get tickets and it's the one time (I wasn't successful),' Broderick said.

"'I pulled every string I could. I can get tickets to the Superbowl, the World Series, I can sit right on the dugout, but Raffi in Madison Square Garden - no room.'"

Maybe, er, not to touch on a sore subject, you should have asked Sarah Jessica Parker to finesse the shwag?