Sarah Jessica Parker had a no-nudity clause placed into her Sex And The City contract

Sarah Jessica Parker has spoken out about her no-nudity clause in her Sex and the City contract, saying it all boiled down to one very simple reason.

Parker, 58, is best known for her long-running role as Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City franchise, which over the years has included a long-running HBO series and two films.

She is now back on screens in the second season of sequel show And Just Like That..., which follows Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and their new New York friends as they navigate their 50s.

The first season famously featured no Samantha (Kim Cattrall), but it has since been announced that the star would return in a cameo in the finale of the second series.

HBO

While Parker’s core female co-stars all had moments of on-screen nudity in the original programme, she has always kept her kit on - in fact, it was written into her contract to make sure of it.

But Parker maintains it was nothing to do with being placed into a ‘different category of actress’, insisting instead that she was ‘just shy’.

Speaking about the matter on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, the actor said she had been creator Darren Star’s first choice for the role, but that she had concerns about the idea of nudity.

“I suspected if it wasn’t in the pilot, it would be part of the series – it felt like it was legitimately going to be talked about,” she said.

“And he said, ‘Don’t do it then. I don’t care. Don’t do nudity’. He said, ‘We’ll have other actors – if they feel comfortable doing it, they’ll do it, but you do not have to'.”

When Stern asked why she wasn’t happy with the idea, Parker replied: “I think I was just shy. I think I just never felt comfortable exposing myself that way.

"I never had any judgements about anybody else doing it. It wasn’t like a morality thing. If somebody else felt comfortable doing it, I was admiring of them.

“But I just never felt comfortable being nude. I didn’t think it would change perception of me […] I was shy.”

Stern also asked about how Parker 'put her foot down' about saying 'f**k' or 'b***h'.

SiriusXM

We were on HBO, and I knew that meant we could say whatever we wanted [...] but I also thought it meant we had to be disciplined, and we shouldn’t just use language because we could.

“And Carrie Bradshaw is a writer. She’s really, really thoughtful about what she says, how she says it, when she says it, who she’s saying it to.

"And if we want to use language, let's be really thoughtful about when she uses it. We can be smart about it.”