LOS ANGELES — Though still a New Yorker at heart, Chris Noth admits
it’s become easier to spend his time on the west coast. “New
York’s changed a lot, but I still keep my place there. I’d never give
that up,” he says. “I mean, let’s face it, it’s become a bank and a
drug store. Sex and the City ruined it.”
Noth is in L.A. now to promote his latest TV gig, The Good Wife, now
in its second season. But that’s not what he really feels like
discussing. “I’m sort of the recurring guest artist on it,” he says.
“It’s not really my show.”
So what does he want to talk about? Well, how about the Tea Party?
“It’s a terrible time in America. It’s all partisanship,” he says. “A
really smart politician doesn’t really have a chance, so we get all
these yokels like the Tea Party, who say some of the most ignorant
things imaginable and are able to survive.”
Playing a politician brought down by a sex and corruption scandal has
given him some new insight.
“A really good politician doesn’t have much
of a chance, unless he’s a f—ing saint. And nobody’s a saint,” Noth
says. “John F. Kennedy would never be president today.” And he’s got a
few theories as to how things got to be the way they are. Here’s a
hint: “Tabloids aren’t helping. “
“It’s all so mundane now. You know, what shoes they’re wearing. ‘Look,
stars pick up dog poop!’ Whatever these magazines are,” he says.
“They’ve so dumbed our country down that look where we are politically.
But that’s a world and a global phenomenon. And I think what people are
doing is missing out on their lives by tuning into this fake celebrity
s—. I’m always astounded, why people want things like pictures.”
So what about that other series he did, the one that ruined New York?
Noth admits it’s still the thing he’s recognized for the most, though
it’s another phenomenon he can’t quite wrap his head around.
“I’ve
never understood that phenomenon,” he says. “I did a show that
obviously had some kind of intense impact about this character that I
played, that relationship with Carrie. But it’s a fantasy. Come on,
look at the apartment she had.”
