‘Gay parents are exactly the same as straight ones’
Nancy Reagan was not a feminist. Dedicated entirely to the needs of “her Ronnie”, she once remarked, “My life truly began when I married my husband.” The adoring way she looked at President Reagan when he gave a speech was so intense it even had its own sobriquet: “The Gaze”.
So one of the first questions I feel compelled to ask when I meet Cynthia Nixon, the actress most famous for playing nobody’s fool Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City, is “Why Nancy?”
Nixon is playing the former First Lady in Killing Reagan, a new television drama about the 1981 assassination attempt that nearly ended Ronald Reagan’s presidency two months after it had begun.
How did the actress access a character who was so out of time?
“Nancy was from such a different generation,” she agrees. “She was the (California) Governor’s wife and President’s wife in the midst of the women’s movement, but she was completely like, ‘That’s not for me!’
“So even (compared to) women who are a similar age, she seems like she’s from another time, in terms of her rejection of feminism.”
Nixon is an unabashed “liberal”, fully signed up to the so-called evils of progressive America. She speaks on behalf of pro-choice action groups, has been a vociferous supporter of Barack Obama, campaigns for gay marriage and herself married her long-term partner Christine Marinoni in 2012.
But there is a hint of admiration in her voice when she talks about Nancy. “She was always looking out for the President, looking around corners, checking for daggers — she was paranoid in that way. But her taking on that worry, and that pessimism, allowed him to be the one who was sunny and reassuring and easy-going.”
One suspects there is something else that attracts Nixon to Nancy: her total contrast with the fictitious Miranda. Because, far from boosting her career, Nixon’s starring role in one of the most successful series of the past 20 years at least initially proved to be something of a millstone around her neck.
A parent is a parent, a child is a child, a family is a family.” Cynthia Nixon, actress most famous for her role as Miranda Hobbes in
Character’s shadow
Miranda — and her fellow Manhattanites — made such an impression on popular culture (there came a point, at the height of the show’s SexandtheCity
popularity, when every woman felt obliged to identify herself as either a Samantha, a Miranda, a Carrie or a Charlotte) that the four leading actresses struggled to escape their characters’ shadows.
“There was a TV series that I had really, really wanted to do,” recalls Nixon. “And I fought hard for it. But the (producer) in the end said, ‘I just feel like I can’t put you as the lead in this series because you just evoke Miranda and (the Sex and the City) world completely, as soon as you walk on screen.’ ”
Nixon gives a sanguine shrug. “So the further I get away from that…” (She has since starred in plenty of other American shows, from The Big C to Hannibal.)
A less shellacked person
Not that Nixon has much in common with Miranda in real life. Where her alter ego was steely, cynical and sarcastic, the 50-year-old actress is warm, open and optimistic. And, whereas Miranda spent the first three seasons of Sex and the City insisting she was not interested in motherhood (although she did finally have an unplanned child with partner Steve), Nixon is a big fan of parenthood, having had two children with her ex-boyfriend Danny Mozes and another with Marinoni (and an anonymous father) in 2011.
In fact, when Nixon and I speak for the second time, by phone, she sounds like she is conducting the interview, handset cradled under her neck, during a post-school-run clear-up of her New York home. There are random beeps on the line, a slight out-of-breathness and a gasp when she almost drops a glass.
“We had ‘Family Share’ this morning,” the actress says. “My youngest one is in kindergarten and they make these towers of wooden blocks which they decorate with photos of themselves and put little totems of things that matter to them in their towers.”
And what does five-year-old Max like? “He likes girls, ha!” hoots Nixon. “He likes friends, he likes skeletons. And he likes school, luckily!”
As for her own personal situation, Nixon denies there is any difference between bringing up a child with a man and parenting a child within a same-sex marriage.
“A parent is a parent, a child is a child, a family is a family,” she says. “I feel like a lot of prejudice we have against people is against people we barely know or have never even met. And certainly when different kinds of people are able to be around each other, particularly when their children are in a class together, a lot of that fear and mistrust just evaporates.”
Nixon and her co-star, Tim Matheson, do a good job of re-enacting Ron and Nancy’s loving relationship in Killing Reagan. Each could barely stand to be without the other, particular after John Hinckley Jr’s assassination attempt, and the drama shows Ronnie sticking love notes on his wife’s dressing table mirror, while Nixon does a convincing imitation of “The Gaze”.
As part of her mission to put dis- tance between herself and Miranda, the actress will also be seen in cinemas later this year playing the poet Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion.
But, then, surprisingly, Nixon tells me she would happily do a third Sex and the City movie (the first bigscreen adaptation came out in 2008 and the much-derided sequel was in 2010). “If the women wanted to do it, and (writer/director) Michael Patrick (King), wanted to write it, absolutely,” she says.
Nixon’s enthusiasm, however, is not shared by Kim Cattrall, who played maneater Samantha Jones in the show. Asked recently if she had any interest in a third movie, the 60-year-old replied: “Absolutely not. Sex and the City was a fantasy. It has to stay a fantasy.” But Nixon disagrees. “One of the really smart things they did on the show was to allow our characters to evolve,” she says. “And not only that, but to age, which was really important. So, yes, you could keep going.”
She admits, however, that the show’s high-fashion sensibilities do not come naturally.
“I’m not a fashionista. I don’t care about it,” she says. Nancy Reagan, she adds, also had an eye for a label, wearing her clothes and her hair like armour.
“I’m a much more open, much less shellacked person.” She laughs. “But I feel like a little shellac can help. We don’t want everybody walking around in their bathrobes all the time, do we?”