In 1998 when Darren Star was trying to get his HBO show Sex and the City off the ground he hadn’t yet locked down his leading lady, Sarah Jessica Parker. But in an interview last month, Star reveals he had a backup actress waiting in the wings. Now that actress, House star Lisa Edelstein, has some details on how the great Carrie swap went down.

“It wasn’t a rumor,” Edelstein said when Access Hollywood Live asked her to comment on the role that got away. “That actually happened.” Last month Star said that without Sarah Jessica Parker on board the show “might have gotten made, but it would have gotten made with Lisa Edelstein.” Edelstein went as far as signing a contract for the role. “I was either going to do it or not. It all depended on whether she said yes,” Edelstein said in reference to Parker’s indecision. “My contract was complete. I was waiting.”

In the end, of course, Parker did decide to sign on and Edelstein said she refrained from watching the show during its six seasons, calling the experience “too painful.”

Interestingly, both Edelstein and Sarah Jessica Parker are now starring in shows about broken marriages. Edelstein’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce airs on Bravo and Parker’s Divorce will air at some point later this year on HBO. Speaking about the fairy-tale happily ever after of Sex and the City, Star—who didn’t write the ending of the show or the two films—had this to say:

I think the show ultimately betrayed what it was about, which was that women don’t ultimately find happiness from marriage. Not that they can’t. But the show initially was going off script from the romantic comedies that had come before it. That’s what had made women so attached. At the end, it became a conventional romantic comedy.

Looks like both original Carrie and backup Carrie are taking that notion to heart in their latest post-marriage projects. D-I-V-O-R-C-E might be just the story modern women are looking for.