Cynthia Nixon addresses criticism that Sex and the City hasn’t aged well
“I always felt like it was incredibly white and it was incredibly privileged.”
As much as Attitude adores Sex and the City (even the movies), we can’t help but wonder: has it aged well?
Over the years, the series has lost some of its cosmo-coloured glow after rightly being pulled up for its handling of lesbianism, trans people and race.
In the Attitude October issue, out now to download and to order globally, Cynthia Nixon shared her thoughts on the matter.
Best known as sharp-shooting lawyer Miranda, the actress admits she had concerns about the sheer whiteness of the show, focused as it is on four white women.
“I haven’t of course seen it in a while, but, I mean, I think at the time we were making it, I always felt like it was incredibly white and it was incredibly privileged,” she begins.
“So that was true at the time, too, it’s just that we have a little more awareness now of the disjunct of that.”
However, Nixon, 54, maintains that the smash-hit sitcom – which ran for six seasons, from 1998 to 2004 – holds up and is trail-blazing in so many other ways.
“I think it’s very well done. It’s very well-written, and every episode is so dense, I think that’s one of the reasons people like to watch it over and over,” she continues.
“There are so many subtleties that it bears repeated viewings because you still find new things in it.”
If ‘S&TC’ were ever to be remade, Nixon – who, in 2018, ran for Governor of New York, losing to Andrew Cuomo – dismisses the suggestion that Miranda should be any different.
“No – I mean, I think these three women who are not Carrie are very much archetypes,” she explains. “We used to think of them as three aspects of Carrie, and when she needed help with a brain problem, she went to Miranda; a sex problem, Samantha; and a love problem, Charlotte.”
Identifying as queer, Nixon lives with her activist wife Christine Marinoni and will next be seen in Ryan Murphy’s latest Netflix saga, Ratchet.
She plays Gwendolynn Briggs, the love interest of Sarah Paulson’s title character, Nurse Ratchet, of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest notoriety.
Ratchet is available to stream on Netflix now.