Christine Taylor Compares Her First Date with Ben Stiller to Carrie's First Date with Mr. Big in Sex and the City

Christine Taylor sees some surprising similarities between her first date with husband Ben Stiller and Carrie Bradshaw’s first date with Mr. Big in Sex and the City.

On the most recent episode of the Are You a Charlotte? podcast, the Sweethearts star, 53, joined host Kristin Davis, 60, to discuss the sixth episode of the beloved HBO comedy’s first season. “Secret Sex” found Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie finally going on her first date with the elusive Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Things get off to a passionate start, but Carrie quickly comes to believe Big is trying to keep their budding relationship under wraps when he takes her to the same dingy, hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant on their second date.

Taylor said the whole scenario reminded her of her own first date with Stiller, whom she met in 1999 while working on a TV pilot that never aired.

“Ben was Ben Stiller,” Taylor recalled. “There's Something About Mary had come out. It was huge.”

She went on to explain that both she and Stiller were “getting out of relationships” and were in “rebound” mode when he first asked her out to dinner.

“But he was still Ben Stiller, so like, he attracted attention wherever he went,” she said.

She recalled Stiller picking her up at her Laurel Canyon home and casually suggesting that they check out a restaurant in a part of Los Angeles that was not particularly “happening” at the time.

“He just was like, 'Hey, I love the Valley. I don't go to a lot of restaurants in the Valley. Like, are there any good restaurants that you like over here?’ ” she said. “Between the lines, what I was reading was literally, like, ‘This is a first date. The last thing we want is for paparazzi to catch a picture and there to be some sort of story.’ ”

“It really made me laugh because, like, he didn't think that I knew what he was [doing],” she added.

Taylor explained that she too wanted to be cautious about their potentially headline-grabbing relationship. “It was this weird thing of, like, I'm going on a date with Ben Stiller. Like, what's the reality? Like, this is weird,” she said. “I wanted this to feel like a secret for me, in a way. I didn't want people to be so intrigued or have opinions.”

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The couple made their first public appearance together at the June 1999 MTV Movie Awards, and married the following May.

But the Taylor-Stiller Sex and the City connection doesn’t end with Carrie and Big. Stiller’s mother, Anne Meara, guest starred in seasons 5 and 6 as the mother-in-law of Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda Hobbes. And more than two decades later, another member of the family is about to join the SATC extended TV universe. On Are You a Charlotte?, Taylor and Davis revealed that Taylor and Stiller’s daughter, Ella Stiller, 22, will be a guest star in an upcoming episode of Max’s And Just Like That...

“It was a dream job for her,” Taylor said. “Just the greatest days working with you and Cynthia and everybody.”

“Oh, let me tell you, we're in a scene together where literally every person shows up,” Davis teased. “And Ella was just such a trooper.”