Talking about Trump, she told The Guardian “I do feel frightened about his malevolent high jinks. I feel concerned about interference from other countries; I think everyone feels concerned about postal votes. Will he leave quietly? I don’t know.” The former Sex and the City (SATC) actor, who portrayed Miranda in SATC, continued, “Trump’s only path to re-election is to position himself as defender of white people and white lives and white supremacy. To say; that’s one alternative, and the only other alternative is chaos, and looting and an end to the suburbs. The fact of the matter is, big cities almost always vote Democrat, particularly in national elections, because we’re very diverse and we have so many more poor people.
But Trump is spinning this narrative that all our major cities are failing, because they’re run by Democrats.” Cynthia is married to the educational activist Christine Marinoni and they co-parent three children including Sam who is trans. Nixon is very alert to the weaponising of Trans rights. “There are many things that the right uses against trans people, and a lot of them have to do with a threat. ‘There’s going to be a man in your women’s bathroom.’ It’s the most preposterous thing in the world.”
Cynthia Nixon is a a prime example of an actor using their global fame to start a conversation, especially about politics. She ran for governor of New York in 2018. She lost to Andrew Coumo “I was triply burdened,” she says. “I was a woman. I was a gay woman. I was a person who had been an activist for a long time, but had never held political office, and obviously the governor is a really big place to start. And I am an actress, which is a barely coded word for ‘bimbo’ or ‘ditz’. I don’t, in my personal life, ever call myself an actress – I call myself an actor.
Earlier this year Cynthia lit up the internet with the short film Be a Lady, They Said about society’s impossible standards for women. Made for the US magazine Girls, Girls, Girls based on the polemic by Camille Rainville the video includes the lines ”look sexy, look hot, you’re asking for it.”
Cynthia Nixon will next be seen in Ratched, the new Netflix origin story of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest, inspired by Ken Kesey’s novel and the 1975 film co-starring Louise Fletcher as the now infamous Nurse Ratched, a role which earned her an Oscar. In Ratched, Sarah Paulson portrays the title character. Set in 1947 as she arrives in Northern California to take up a post at a psychiatric hospital.
Presenting herself as the consumate caregiver, there is a growing darkness beneath the perfect veneer as imagined by Ryan Murphy who previously created Glee, Feud (Bette and Joan) and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Cynthia Nixon co-stars as Gwendolyn Briggs, a lesbian press secretary for the governor.
Ratched streams on Netflix from Friday 18th September.