Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon has admitted she’s found the reaction to her character’s choices in reboot series And Just Like That… a little on the “bizarre” side.
Cynthia played corporate lawyer Miranda Hobbes in all six seasons of Sex And The City, and reprised the role in both spin-off films.
However, when viewers met Miranda at the beginning of AJLT, she was in a very different place, having quit her job to study human rights and becoming somewhat dependent on alcohol.
As the series played out, Miranda began an extramarital affair with non-binary comedian Che Diaz, eventually abandoning an internship in the finale so she can fly out to Los Angeles (a place that Sex And The City era Miranda was no fan of) to be with them.
These changes to Miranda were some of the most polarising parts of AJLT, with many claiming she has been acting out of character, a criticism Cynthia has admitted to finding a “bizarre reaction”.
“First of all, I think Miranda is brave, and I think Miranda is charging forward,” she told Vogue. “She doesn’t know where she’s going exactly, but she knows she has to go somewhere. And I think that’s always been true of Miranda, right?
“Miranda’s very smart, and she’s very tenacious, but the idea that she’s levelheaded — she’s never been levelheaded! She’s a loose cannon, a very opinionated loose cannon.
“She’s always been a bull in a china shop and losing her temper and blowing things up then having to backtrack when she calms down.”
On the criticism of her character’s affair, Cynthia added: “It reminds me very much of Carrie and some of her most seminal moments of being in love with Mr. Big and trying to make herself be in love with Aidan but having an affair.
“Like I was saying before, a feminist show shouldn’t be agitprop, it shouldn’t be propaganda showing women as these sensible, wise, kind, attractive people. First of all, who wants to watch that? I don’t want to watch that.”
“It’s to show women and our struggles and our dreams and our foibles. You don’t always know where you’re going. Those are the people that I’m interested in, not the people who are playing it safe.”
The show’s creator Michael Patrick King previously defended the breakdown of Miranda and Steve’s marriage, during a discussion on the And Just Like That… companion podcast.
“I want to say one more thing about Steve and Miranda, because I’ve heard a lot about ‘how could they be here, after they were on the [Brooklyn] bridge in the first movie?’,” he said, referring to the couple’s reconciliation scene in the first Sex And The City film.
“Yes, that was an incredibly, incredibly emotional recommitment to each other,” the showrunner continued. “But what people tend to forget is that the moment before that, Miranda is looking at a list, pros and cons. And the cons on the list far outweigh the pros.
“When she actually gets up and goes to the bridge, it’s because she sees a milk moustache on her face, which reminds her that her and Steve once had a laugh over that… that was what they were feeling in that moment. And now Miranda is in a different place.”
“The bridge exists in their history,” he added. “And guess what? So does zombie sex [a reference Miranda made to the lack of passion in her marriage]. Our job is not to facilitate fairytales, always.”
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