“I’m still getting to know her,” Ms. Parker said. She was quick to clarify that she is no more Frances than she ever was Carrie (she and Mr. Broderick married about a week before she shot the pilot). But “Divorce,” at turns moody and comic, does cover material that is meaningful to Ms. Parker, who is an executive producer of the series. For some years, she has wanted to do a show about long-term relationships, a natural outgrowth, she said, of countless conversations she has had with friends who, like her, are in early middle age, a time when it’s common for people to grapple with the choices they have made, in relationships as much as anything else. The show reflects, she said, a “certain introspection and reckoning” that is inevitable after some 15 or 20 years of marriage.

“It’s a really specific point in a person’s life, right now, for my generation,” said Ms. Parker. “It’s when you start to think about relationships, the time spent, what came of it — and what do you do with where you find yourself now?”

AFTER “SEX AND THE CITY,” Ms. Parker did not look very hard for her next big role; when people asked about another television series, “I used to say never,” she told Alec Baldwin on his podcast, “Here’s the Thing.” The schedule is demanding for someone raising three children (her twins, Marion and Tabitha, are now 7, and her son, James Wilkie, is 13), and she never found a show that intrigued her enough to make the family sacrifice worthwhile. “When you’re at a point in your life where you can make choices, you can make a choice to say no,” she said. ”It’s kind of nice.”

She made two “Sex and the City” movies, to decidedly mixed reviews, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in “The Family Stone.” Following that, one of her movies had critical success but small audiences (“Smart People,” 2008), while others had less favorable reviews and even smaller audiences (see “Spinning Into Butter,” 2007). Her reputation as a beloved star never flagged, but neither did she ever land on a role so strong that it put Carrie to bed for good. “It is hard to find material you really love, particularly when you’ve been so successful,” Mr. Broderick said. “It feels like a lot of pressure.”