CYNTHIA NIXON
The Emmy-winning Sex and the City and The Gilded Age star, 57, returns for the 11-episode sophomore season of And Just Like That… (June 22 on Max). Reprising her role as Miranda Hobbes, Nixon will again join Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie and Kristin Davis as Charlotte as the women continue their journey of self-discovery in the the New York City-based series. Nixon also returns as Ada Brook in The Gilded Age (HBO) in the Fall.
What can we look forward to in second season of And Just Like That...?
Where we left Miranda at the end of the last season, she had made this big, bold decision to renounce her very coveted internship and follow Che (Sara Ramirez) to California to be the girlfriend of the new TV star. That’s where we pick them up, and it has lots of wonderful things and lots of pitfalls as one could imagine. I can’t say much more than that.
How do you see Miranda now that she’s no longer a corporate attorney? Is she in search of happiness?
I think she’s really in search of a purpose. When she was younger, she really wanted to be successful, and she wanted to match up to the big boys and not let her gender hold her back. She wanted to be a partner in a big law Ĥrm, she wanted to earn a big salary, and she wanted all the status that came with it. We maybe think of Charlotte as being status-oriented but, actually, in a certain way, when it came to work, Miranda was very status-oriented. But now she has climbed to the top of that mountain and the view isn’t so great. She’s keenly aware that she’s much closer to the end of her life than she is to the beginning. I think she’s having an Is that all there is? kind of a moment.
She doesn’t want it to read on her tombstone: “Here lies Miranda, she was a corporate lawyer.” I think that has happened to many people in the last two years. I think the election of Donald Trump, the Black Lives Matter movement, the xenophobia that we’ve seen here, the Muslim ban, and all that stuff really woke her up. She feels like she has all these skills as an attorney and why not use them to try and make the world a better place for people who are vulnerable as opposed to lining pockets?
There’s been some negative fan reaction to Miranda’s changes. Do you think change is what Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha have always been about?
They’ve always been on a journey of self-discovery. I think on the most
basic level they were not women who the First item on their to-do list was to get married and have children. And so, if that very traditional female path is not the one that they were intending to walk down, well, what path were they going to take? And they had to, to some extent, create their own path. So, I think, yes, it’s always been a journey of self-discovery.
And even if you don’t intend to be on a journey of self-discovery, life is always going to throw curveballs at you whether you’re looking for them or not. But I do think that these four women were always, if not looking for them, at least up for them.
New York City is like the fifth member of the
group. What are some of your favorite things about the city? I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I’ve always loved everything about the city. I love how small it is and yet how populous, how many different kinds of people there are. And when you have such a concentration of people, there can just be everything you want, whether it’s a particular kind of food you’re looking for, a particular kind of art, or a particular kind of music or clothing. You name it, you can Ĥnd it here.
It’s a city full of busy bees and I love that it’s not a car culture. Our public transportation needs a great investment and improvement, but still, we can jet all around the city in the subway and be in a million different neighborhoods in a short space of time.