Sex and the City - The Movie: exclusive on-set report

Will Carrie ever wed Big? Will Charlotte finally succeed in having children? And just how many more men will Samantha bed? Will Lawrence gained exclusive access to the set of the long-awaited Sex and the City film to find the answers to these and other questions - such as, are the actresses even speaking to each other?

The day before I visit the set of Sex and the City: The Movie thousands of onlookers gathered to gawp at the cast as they shot a scene on the New York streets. Gangs of assistants barked at the crowds, ushering them away. 'By the end of the television show,' begins Sarah Jessica Parker, 'we'd become accustomed to curiosity when we were shooting on the street. With the film, though, even more people are coming, and in between each scene it can take half an hour just to move the crowds back.' She smiles. 'But we're grateful people still have affection for these characters. Anyone who looks that gift horse in the mouth is mad.'

Turning heads: Sarah Jessica Parker (far right) as Carrie Bradshaw in the film of Sex and the City

When the American television network HBO first broadcast Sex and the City in 1998 it could hardly have imagined how successful it would be. By the time the sixth (and last) series was showing in America, the programme was being screened in 150 countries, and the final episode drew an audience of more than ten million in America and 4.5 million here.

Ten years earlier Sex and the City was a weekly column in the New York Observer, written by the journalist Candace Bushnell. The column, in which Bushnell wrote about her own and her friends' sexual adventures, proved so popular that in 1997 she published a book. One year later the first episode of the television adaptation was broadcast.

At the show's core were the adventures of four thirtysomething, single female friends working and dating in New York. There was Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker), the journalist and narrator based on Candace Bushnell. There was the bed-hopping publicist Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), the sweet-natured art curator Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and the no-nonsense lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). The characters were based on Bushnell's friends, though she admits that 'most of my girlfriends were like Samantha. They had sex with whomever, whenever they wanted and they made no apologies.'

The storylines invariably involved little more than one romantic escapade after another - was Carrie back with her on-off boyfriend Big? Had Charlotte and her impotent husband, Trey, slept together yet? - but it was the focus on female friendship that was so groundbreaking and was the key to its success. The girls' banter balanced romantic comedy with sometimes shocking lewdness, articulating the thoughts of many women over (and under) 30. 'I think Sex and the City was an expression of something that people had been thinking but no one said,' says Parker, her slender frame wrapped in skinny blue jeans and a white T-shirt, when I meet her on the film set at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn Navy Yard. 'We got to make fun of sex, and make sex fun. And I think the single woman was an audience that had no spokesperson.'

Since then several shows have latched on to the four-female-friends formula in an attempt to recapture the magic - Mistresses on the BBC; Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, also by Bushnell, in America - but none has achieved a following to rival that of Sex and the City.

'I think what's great is how different all the characters are from each other,' offers Cynthia Nixon when I speak to her later, 'but how devoted they are, too. Whatever happens, we're all there for each other.'

Fans have clamoured for the girls' return ever since the show finished with Carrie reunited with Mr Big, Samantha battling cancer, Charlotte and her new beau Harry bidding to adopt, and Miranda and her ex-boyfriend Steve seeking relationship bliss. As I drive through the sun-dappled streets on my way to the set I wonder what's next.

When I arrive hundreds of extras, all immaculately dressed in designer attire, are at the catering tables. Kim Cattrall wanders by while Kristin Davis picks at the food. She is wearing a 'pregnancy suit' - Charlotte is pregnant in the film.

Just as the cast take their seats for a scene (today's set is an exact replica of the catwalk at New York fashion week) the studio's vice-president, John Steiner, proposes to his girlfriend over the loudspeaker. The extras cheer and whoop - he chose the location on account of her devotion to the show - and it seems odd, amid such enthusiasm, to remember that the characters' return to the screen almost didn't happen.

Sex and the City: The Movie was scheduled to start filming as soon as the television show ended, but Cattrall openly refused to participate unless she was paid more. There had been tensions over money ever since Parker was promoted to executive producer in the second series, at a salary of $300,000 (£150,000) an episode. Cattrall's attempts to negotiate her own raise did not, according to insiders, endear her to the other three, and crew members claimed the girls 'wouldn't even sit with [Cattrall] at mealtimes'. Cattrall was conspicuously alone at the Emmy Awards in 2004, too, while Parker, Nixon and Davis sat together. When she was asked about it, Cattrall said, 'Are we the best of friends? No. We're professional actresses. We have our own separate lives.'