For countless of women, Sex and the City was about empowerment, but its star Sarah Jessica Parker has a different take on it.

During Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, Sarah sat down with Michelle Pfeiffer and happened to speak about the legacy of the show.

“I don’t think that empowerment was a word that was ever used once on our set, in a writers room, among the female actors,” she explained. “I remember when it came out it was definitely shocking for people. It was controversial. Because [Carrie Bradshaw] was a writer, she could ask lots of provocative questions and observe, and the other characters could, as they were archetypes, sort of make choices. It wasn’t intentionally empowering, I guess is my point.”

She continued: “I think [the creative team and show runner Michael Patrick] liked telling stories about women that were authentic and often funny. You know, where is that? What does contentment mean? How do you reconcile the things you want with what you’re given? How does Carrie and her female friendships, how do they find love? It was a time and a place, economically and politically, that allowed for us to tell those stories that way.”

She added that she’s happy the writers stayed away from focusing on an empowerment-type show: “It would have been yucky and self-conscious, and it would have been contrived and stiff, versus Michael Patrick King and his extraordinary gifted and skilled writing room, just delight in storytelling.”