Cynthia Nixon says she cringed while rewatching Sex and the City.
In an interview with Grazia published on Monday, May 26, Nixon says she watched all six seasons of the iconic HBO series before reprising her role as Miranda Hobbes in the spinoff And Just Like That.
Nixon, 59, thought that 90 percent of the original show was “still pretty great” but “certain things have really not aged well.” She told the outlet that “it was always very difficult being on a show that was so white. I always hated that. When we would raise it, we were told: this is Candace Bushnell’s world and it’s a very white world. I’m like, OK… .’”
The actor, who is married to wife Christine Marinoni, added that “some of the trans stuff, some of the gay stuff was a little cringy to look at.”
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But for Nixon, Sex and the City endures as “a feminist show — it’s always been a feminist show.”
Nixon was 32 years old when the series debuted in 1998, introducing viewers to ambitious attorney Miranda and her best friends as they navigated the never-a-dull-moment dating pool of New York City.
“What you have to remember is that we were in our thirties and forties,” Nixon said. “Of course, I look at the show now, we look like babies, but being single at that age, at that time, still had a kind of stigma.”
Summing up its Y2K-era philosophy, she added: “You can be a woman, you can have a lot of sex with a lot of different people. It didn’t make you a slut and it didn’t mean you were using sex to get something. You were having sex — because you enjoyed having sex!”
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The series ended in 2004 with Miranda finding love and stability with husband Steve (David Eigenberg), but when And Just Like That premiered in 2021, Miranda leaves Steve to be with Che (Sara Ramirez), a plot twist that upset SATC fans who loved Miranda and Steve’s relationship.
Nixon told Grazia that the blowback “doesn’t really bother me. Our show always killed its darlings. If we’re just gonna play it safe and nice, why are you watching?”
Nixon added: “I love Che, I love Sara. It’s hard to know what people would have made of Che if Che hadn’t ostensibly broken up Steve and Miranda. But I don’t want a show in which everybody is behaving well all the time.”
Season 3 of And Just Like That launches on Thursday, May 29. During the Season 2 finale, which aired in August 2023, Miranda made amends with Steve and they agreed to be friends following their divorce. She later crossed paths with recent ex Che and the former couple got to a better place as well.
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“We did something that was hard to do, which is we took something familiar and did make it new,” showrunner Michael Patrick King told Variety in 2022. “For better and for worse.”
He said at the time that he was paying little attention to the cacophony of reactions on social media.
“I monitor in macro, not micro,” King said. “I monitor in the drum beats: ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen! This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. They should all be killed! I can’t live without them. The clothes are terrible, the clothes are great.’ I’m not into the minutia of anything.”
