Miranda may have the designer wardrobe, but Cynthia Nixon wouldn’t swap lives with her for anything.
How important are friendships to you?
They’re very important to me. I grew up in New York, so I’m in the place where I grew up with people I went to elementary and high school. I feel the same way with the women on the show. We would do whatever we needed to do — whether it’s lending each other money or helping each other move or sitting for each other’s kids. One of my oldest best friends was in the delivery room when my kids were born and it was tremendously great to have her there.
How is the movie different from the series?
Well, we’re older and we’re much more … when the film starts two of us are married, the way we were at the end of the show. Charlotte has a daughter and Carrie is with Mr Big and Samantha is with her guy, and even though we all come together, there’s something that happens when you get older — we’re more racked up with our men and our lives so we’re kind of four queens in our queendom. We don’t have the same kind of freedom to just drop everything and get together for a cocktail or shopping.
What do you say about rumours that there was on-set feuding?
I don’t feel that there was. You work with people and you have disagreements and you move on. I think people have ideas, they have preconceptions and biases, that women together are supposed to get catty.
Now that you’re older, are you more reluctant to do nude scenes like the ones you did in the movie?
There is some nudity, and I think that we were somewhat more reluctant. I have to treat it like a bandaid — just ripping it off. There’s no tequila first. My nude scene is with David Eigenberg, and I know him very well. We’ve done a lot of nude scenes together, but of course it is a little nerve-wracking.
What do you think of the men the three of you — Charlotte, Samantha and your own character — ended up with?
They were all not who we would have expected to be with. Charlotte tried so hard to picture the perfect pretty country club pedigree guy, and she got the opposite. You never know who you’ll end up with or what will end up appealing to you. We need to be more open.
How does your daughter deal with your Sex and the City fame?
I think she gets embarrassed a little bit at school with her friends, but she’s kind of used to it. I think she’s also proud of it.
Now that you’re in your forties are you more settled down in your life?
Yes, and I have forced myself to slow down and I’m not always accomplishing things. I’m taking more down time.
How does Christine cope with your fame? Is it harder for you because you’re in a relationship with a woman?
When you live in New York there are so many different kinds of people that it’s really a non-issue. We think about it. We might go and visit where my grandmother is from, in Missouri. We thought about that and what that might be like (laughs). We were just in Jamaica and we were at the airport leaving, and there was a huge front page of the newspaper about some gay bashing and gay murders. There were some splinter groups that wanted to march and the main group was concerned it might cause more violence, so I’m very aware that in other places it’s very different and unpleasant and even dangerous, but in New York it’s a whole other thing.
Did you have a crisis when you turned 40?
No, I had a big party and I feel like, for me, 40 was a real turning point. I really felt I had reached some kind of plateau and I was very happy with where I was in my life. Sometimes it’s hard to turn those milestones when you’re not happy with where you are, but I was.
For more of this interview, see this week’s Woman’s Day (on sale June 2).
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