Comedienne and actress Sandra Bernhard turned down the chance to play Miranda Hobbes on hit US TV series Sex and the City because she felt the original script was "terrible".

Producers asked The King of Comedy star to audition for the role of the career-minded lawyer alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall when they were casting the series, but Bernhard admits the pay wasn't large enough to warrant her relocating to New York for the project.

During an interview with U.S. radio host Howard Stern, she says, "First of all, you have to understand, when I was offered that role they were paying everybody $7,500-a-week (£4,688). The original script was terrible. Never in a million years. It had nothing to do with selling out, it just wasn't any good...

"I would have had to play third or fourth fiddle to Sarah Jessica Parker and put up with her s**t? It would have been hideous to work with her. Ask any of those ladies on that show. Nobody gets along I don't think... But that's not why I didn't take it, it was the script and the money...

"Had it been a good script, had I thought it had legs, I would have done it... I was making a lot more on (TV show) Roseanne and all I had to do was drop in a few times."

The role of Miranda Hobbes eventually went to actress Cynthia Nixon.