Cynthia Nixon - ‘Being brave is feeling scared and doing it anyway’

0:26Race the rudders! How to Fail is proudly partnering with Arla Lacto Free through June. Delicious dairy with all the taste, none of the lactose.

0:46Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is a podcast born out of the realisation that sometimes when things go wrong, actually we can learn a lesson along the way. Every week I ask a guest about three times they failed in their life and what data they might have acquired. But I think we are all clumsy and dumb when it comes to things like race. Our young people have a better roadmap and I think it's important for us to follow them. Stop acting like in the middle of the take. My guest today is an actor of astonishing range. During the course of her career, she has portrayed maids and bankers, heiresses and lawyers, as well as two former first ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy Reagan.

1:35A Tony Award winning stage actor, she was once so in demand that she made Broadway history by appearing simultaneously in two productions, shuttling between curtain calls. While her versatility is beyond question, it's fair to say that Cynthia Nixon has become permanently associated with one character, Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City and its companion piece and Just Like That. She won an Emmy for her performance and a generation of fans who identified with the ambitious type A lawyer whose cynicism disguised a vulnerability that has grown markedly through the decades. The third season of And Just Like That premieres later this month.

2:21Off screen and stage, Nixon is also a political activist and vocal advocate for progressive causes. She even met her wife at a gay rights rally in 2002. Actually an education rally. Oh, thank you. Yes, yes. She even met her wife at an education rally in 2002. In 2018, she ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of New York. More recently, she has repeatedly spoken out in support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Nixon's political conscience recalls, perhaps, the legacy of her journalist father, Walter, who won awards for his coverage of the civil rights movement. But it also speaks to her determination to be more than just a celebrity.

3:05I feel like I'm a person who knows what she can do, Nixon says. I really don't like to fail. What a great lead in. Yes, welcome. Even though you don't like failing. I don't like failing. It's true. It's true. How actually has this process been for you coming up with your three failures? I don't know. It's been okay. Okay. Well, we'll get onto those in a minute. But I wonder whether the character of Miranda Hobbs has taught you anything valuable about a failure. You know, if you think about what's happened to Miranda on and just like that, really right from the get-go, we've actually seen Miranda fail at a lot of things that was the best thing that could have happened to her, I think, in a way.

3:53I mean, she didn't actually fail at being a corporate lawyer. She succeeded. But I think she realized that her life quest to be, you know, on top in the corporate law world was a mistake. That's the wonderful thing about our show is like the age that we are in our 50s. You know, there is enough time to make a change, you know? And if you want to, if you feel like you're on the wrong path, and I think then she felt like two more big things. I think she felt like she was in a marriage that just wasn't working anymore. And so she ended it. She ended it pretty clumsily, but she ended it. And she also decided that she was, you know, an alcoholic, that she was relying far too much on alcohol.

4:45And she was, as most alcoholics are, determined to not accept that. And then, you know, she failed to convince herself and her friends that she was not an alcoholic. Yes. That's so beautifully expressed. and I think I'm relatively unique in that I watched And Just Like That before I watched Sex and the City. Oh, that is very interesting. It's fascinating in the sense that I was really surprised how divisive some of the storylines were. Yes. Because I was just seeing the show on its own terms. Right, right. Were you surprised by how? I mean, here's what I think. I was not surprised that people were upset about Miranda not only leaving Steve but cheating on Steve, right?

5:37You know, people were very fond of them as a couple, very devoted to them as a couple. But I guess I was surprised that there was pushback on when Miranda decided to go back to school and had an African-American professor and sort of put her foot in her mouth the first day of class sort of over and over and over. I think people were really horrified. And that surprised me because I think a lot of people identify with Miranda. And I think as the years have passed, more of them have identified with her. I mean, there was a book that was written called We Should All Be Miranda's, you know, which was like 25 years ago or whatever it is now, 26, 27 years ago, Miranda's positions maybe seemed a little strident or whatever.

6:31And now the culture has just moved. And the things that she was saying, you know, a quarter of a century ago seem like just common sense. But I think that everybody thought, oh, Miranda's the smart one, and I'm the smart one. I'm like Miranda. So to see her sort of flop and fail, I think, you know, I think made people feel like, well, Miranda's not that clumsy and dumb because I'm not clumsy and dumb. But I think we are all clumsy and dumb when it comes to things like race. And I think that that was, you know, the show succeeded so wonderfully, the original show. But I think one thing that always was not great about the show was how incredibly white it was.

7:20And so I feel like, you know, that was a big goal of ours when we did And Just Like That, to make sure that that was no longer the case. But I think to have us all just magically have, you know, be friends with people of color and it was like, you know, just snap your fingers, I would have been sort of more, I think that would have been more problematic. I think it's good to, you know, if you're a white person and you look around and you realize you don't have any black friends and you sort of like a bull in a china shop because that is who Miranda is. She is a bull in a china shop and she always has been.

8:02And she's going in the right direction, but her eagerness to get there trips her up. I love how much you love her. I do love her. I think you've nailed it. I think people found it confronting. It's like holding a mirror up, which is what great art should do. Right. Okay, so The Gilded Age. I just have to put a question there because I love it so much. Thank you. And you play Ada Brooks, a very different character from Miranda. Yes. And you did your simultaneous role thing again. You were filming both of them at the same time. I found it very, very, very hard. I did not expect to find it as hard as I did.

8:36Because as you say, when I was a young person, I had done those two shows simultaneously. But that was, and there have been lots of times in my life when I've been, you know, filmed, but this was, this was hard because what I didn't count on, well, first of all, I'm older. So there's that. There's a lot of lines to learn in both of these shows. There's that. But that wasn't the primary problem. The primary problem was when you're acting on film, so much of it is about believing you're in the world because there's not really rehearsal, you know? So being steeped in that world. So to have this sort of schizophrenic, you know, jumping back and forth, I found really hard.

9:22And I also realized when I did both of those plays at the same time, I had done them each separately. I knew the characters I knew, but which is true of these two shows too, except with these two shows, it was new material that I was having to digest and, you know, filter through myself. And that was very hard to trying to be discovering what to do with each of these characters when it was like yesterday I was, you know, in modern day New York and today I'm a widow in the 19th century, like very hard. Yes. And so fascinating that these shows, so the Gilded Age, which as you say is 19th century New York, scripted by Julian Fellows.

10:06And Sex and the City and And Just Like That have done so much for New York as a city. And New York really is the extra character in both of those shows. And I wonder if they have helped you reinterpret your own city. Whether it's helped me re-see the city, I would say two things. One is the world of Sex and the City and And Just Like that is really different than my world, particularly on the original show. It was like all of this dating and on the town and being at the like trendiest place. That's, you know, that's, it might as well be a make-believe world as how a little it had in common with my New York.

10:49And the, the Gilded Age, do you know the end of Planet of the Apes when the, this, you see, They walk by the Statue of Liberty now submerged in sand over thousands of years. And you realize, oh, this is not another planet. This is New York. I feel that with the Gilded Age. It's so hard to remember that, you know, with a few buildings aside, like Grand Central or the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the New York Public Library, that it was here. It does feel like another planet.

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12:10This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation. Well, talking of New York and its iconography brings us on to your first failure, which is your failure to get elected governor of New York in 2018. Yes. Tell us about this and why you chose it. Well, it's a little bit of a cheat. I have to admit, it's a little bit of a cheat. I tried really hard to get elected governor. I did everything I could, you know, morally and reasonably do to become elected. But I had almost, you know, my belief that I might be elected was less than 1%, I would say. so and you know running against Andrew Cuomo which was something that I felt was very important to do and I was no one was really stepping up to run against him and I was sort of uniquely suited I thought to run against him it was in the end such a win yes because you know by my running I brought so much attention to the race and I brought so much attention to the situation in New York.

13:25And we were able to take back the New York State Senate for the Democrats. And we had, you know, a supermajority that we had not had in, I don't know, since like 100 years. And so, so many pieces of legislation that had been part of my campaign platform were then passed by the legislature and Cuomo was, you know, kind of shamed into it. So, I mean, like the most progressive rent regulation in the country, the Reproductive Health Act, which finally codified abortion law, you know, Roe versus Wade into New York state law, Genda, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which protected queer and trans people in employment, the Green New Deal.

14:18I mean, the driver's licenses for undocumented people, an end of cash bail for all but the most violent felons. I mean, it really goes on. And the most important, the reason that I ran, if I had to boil it down to one thing, was the funding of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which meant this windfall of cash for not just New York City schools, but across the state that our kids had been robbed of this education funding for a long time. And there had been, for 25 years, there had been this lawsuit that Cuomo refused, even though the highest court had said, you must implement this. Cuomo just pretended not to hear it.

15:00And so that money was finally come through. So it was, you know, a failure, but it was such a win. Yes. And you also got 35 % of the vote, which is pretty impressive. I think even, yes, I think we spent two and a half million dollars and he spent almost 30. Huh. Now, talk to me about Cuomo himself, because you said that you were uniquely positioned to run against him. Yes. And part of the reason my perception is, is that you weren't scared. And he is someone who is famously vindictive. Right. Were you scared? Of course, I was terrified. I was terrified. And I have to say, I debated him on television.

15:44And that was maybe the scariest thing I've ever done. Really? Yes. But it went pretty well. It went pretty well. But, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt, who you mentioned I played, you know, famous. said, being brave is not not being scared. Being brave is being very scared and doing it anyway. And the reason, though, that I said that I was so uniquely positioned was that I was not in his business. I was not in the business of politics. And the reason no one was running against him was he is very adept at ending people's careers in a moment. If they say something disparaging against him, much less, you know, run against him and point out the many problems and corruptions and failures.

16:37So, and also, you know, a woman named Zephyr Teachout, who's a constitutional lawyer, ran against him four years earlier. And she was able to, you know, we've banned fracking in New York State because Zephyr ran. And the thing about Zephyr's campaign was, as brilliant as she was, they wouldn't take her seriously. They wouldn't put her on television. And she did so well, and she won so many things for New York. And I was like, one thing I know is that they will put me on television. And so he can't, I don't, I can't see the way in which he can really hurt me. I'm very steeped in the progressive activist community and I can just bring everybody into this big tent and together we can make a platform.

17:25I mean, that's why my platform passed, right? It wasn't that nobody had ever thought of these ideas before. It was literally the activists on the ground were brought in and wrote the platform. And so once there was a super majority in the legislature, we could pass these things that were so long overdue. I'm very interested in your thoughts about gender and how it played into this particular contest, but also where we're at culturally and politically, globally, but particularly in America, where it feels to me, I hope it's the death rattle of misogyny, this resurgence in kind of maleness and male violence in the political landscape.

18:13And I wonder if you were aware of that shifting temperature at the time that you were running against Cuomo. I mean, I don't think this is anyway the death rattle of misogyny. I feel like, particularly when times are scary, we want someone who's going to take care of it. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen A Few Good Men. Have you seen that movie? Yes. You want me on that wall, right? It's like it doesn't matter that I'm a monster. You want to sleep comfortably, safely in your bed at night and not have to think about it. And that's why you get a monster. And I think we're just not at a place where we feel like a mommy can protect us in the way we feel like a daddy can.

19:07I think that so many female politicians, there's so much stuff thrown at them about, you know, being naggy or the things that we, whatever our gender, the things that we bristle against in our mothers, we see that in female politicians, particularly if they're not 25. Yeah. And it was very interesting to me during the campaign when I would wear a dress, it would be one vibe. And when I would wear a suit with pants, it would be a very different vibe. People would just automatically take me more seriously. And so it was interesting. So when, so I've talked to our wardrobe department on and just like that about this, that as Miranda is becoming more of a kind of a front facing political person, you know, she's, she'll, you'll see her like go on television.

20:02We started to see that go on television more to speak on behalf of Human Rights Watch. I was like, you know, they would pull out dresses for me and I would be like, I think she's going to lean into the suit, not just because she's queer now, but just in terms of being taken seriously. Yes. I love a suit. And when I started wearing what you call a pantsuit and I call a trousersuit, I realized why men have been wearing them for centuries because there are so many pockets. And you can put stuff places and you don't need a separate bag. And so there's power in that, right? Because your hands are free and you are unencumbered.

20:40Right. And it's sort of a radical act of feminism to wear. Right. Yeah. Well, I look forward to seeing Miranda in her pantsuit.

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21:29And watch Only Murders in the Building streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Before we get on to your second failure, because your second failure takes us back to your childhood, but I would love to know a bit more about the molding of your political consciousness and how much your parents had a part to play in that. I think they had a very big part. I think that, so as you mentioned, my father was a journalist and he worked for WRVR, which was a forerunner of National Public Radio. It was based out of Riverside Church, which is an extremely political church in upper Manhattan.

22:10I was little and I don't actually remember, but just as an indication, like I was brought to a lot of Vietnam protests and stuff. And I think one of the reasons that my father left Texas where he's from was not just because he wanted to live in New York and be a journalist in New York. I think he wanted to, you know, get a front row seat at the civil rights movement. And I think having grown up in the South and watching segregation and all of its horrors, I think he wanted to, you know, be part of ending that. And certainly my parents were pretty, my parents separated when I was six, but I think they were pretty united in their political thinking.

22:58And I think, you know, my mother, when I was old enough to understand, you know, she told me about that she had had an abortion when it was illegal and how horrible it had been and how it was important to really fight to protect this right and never let anyone take it away. And so I would say from the time I was like 13, I was doing, you know, political fundraisers for Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion Rights Action League. And certainly I grew up, I was a teenager in the 80s when AIDS struck and, you know, we all marched and did what we could in that. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a thing that I was born into.

23:42And so when I met my wife at this education rally, I mean, it was an incredible way to all of these things that live in me, here is someone who actually does these things for a living. And like, what a great team we would be. Do you feel pessimistic or optimistic about the future, given where we are politically? It's a really, really terrible time. And the upside of it being a terrible time is people can't sit on the sidelines anymore. I think that's very important. I mean, I think that's why I ran for governor. It wasn't just that I had despised Cuomo for so long and wanted someone to really give him a run for his money.

24:32It was when Donald Trump was elected. I was like, we can't, you know, women and progressive people and people of color and queer people, we have to run for office. We have to try and wrest this system back from the millionaires and billionaires. OK, your second failure is your failure to be cast as Alice in Wonderland in 1982. Yes. I've got no context for this, so tell me the story. Okay, all right. Well, I love Alice in Wonderland. I love her in every one of her incarnations. I cannot tell you how much Alice in Wonderland stuff there is in my house. And anyway, there was an amazing actress and director named Eva Legallion, who was an actor manager in the early through the mid 20th century.

25:28And I was a fan of hers. She was actually queer. And actually, it's interesting. That was not why I was a fan of hers. I was a fan of hers. I didn't even know that she was queer for a long time. But actually, so she had a company called the Civic Repertory Company. And they famously did Alice in Wonderland multiple times in their history. And they would do the costumes just that they looked like they walked right out of the book, the Tennille drawings. So, and she actually, I learned much later that one of the, other than loving Alice in Wonderland, the reason that they did that work was that her lover, the two of them did the Red Queen and the White Queen.

26:19And it's so hard to find a vehicle if you have two leading ladies in the company. When I made my stage debut at the age of 14 in a play, The Philadelphia Story, it was directed by Ellis Rabb, who had a few years before directed The Royal Family, which was Edna Ferber, George Kaufman play. And Eva Legallion had been in it as the old lady, the matriarch of basically the Barrymores who dies on stage. incredible. Anyway, so I sort of felt a kinship to Eva Legallion, and I thought, I'm 14, I'm 15, I have long blonde hair. I look like I am Alice, and I thought she would see that, and then I would get to, you know, be in this world like a living embodied, you know, come to life of the book.

27:12But I think she thought I was too young, and she cast Kate Burton, who is wonderful and maybe 10 years older. She was just out of Yale. But it still pains me that I did not get to experience being in a play with Eva Legallion and playing that role. Although I have to say, there are a few fictional or historical characters that are some from my childhood that I so, I don't know, they live inside me. And Emily Dickinson is another one, and I did get to play her. And so if I guess if I had to choose between being Alice or being Emily, I guess I would choose Emily. And forgive my ignorance, but is Eva Logallian still alive?

27:58No, no, no. She was very old at the time. Okay. And did you ever get a chance to? No, no, no. I mean, I auditioned for her. And I was very young and inexperienced, but, you know. Someone you admired not quite seeing you as you saw yourself. It can be very... Exactly. Exactly. I'm fascinated by your focus. And I also knew what I wanted to do very, very young. And I don't know where it came from. It just appeared. It was just in my head. Yeah. When did you know that you wanted to be an actor? My mother had tried to be an actress and failed. And she tried for a long time. And she went to Yale Drama School.

28:38And she studied with Uta Hagen. And she did all these things. But she finally, after about 15 years, she was like, I'm not getting anywhere. I'm going to stop. But that part of her never stopped. And so my childhood was, in a wonderful way, but in a total indoctrination way, my childhood was filled with going to the theater and going to the movies and going to see old movies and endlessly talking about them and dissecting them. And I actually think now that I've become a director also, I realized that I think my mother was more of a director than an actress because so much of my childhood was spent going to stuff and being like, now what was wrong here?

29:30What didn't work? And she said to me once, you can learn a lot more about how to make a play or how to make a movie or a piece of art from a failed piece of art because then you can see the spine, you can see the stitches, you can see the bones, you can see the construction because it hasn't quite worked. So it was a very natural thing. You know, people whose parents or dads or whatever love sports, they grow up wanting to be athletes. Well, my mother loved the theater. And so I grew up wanting to be on stage. You mentioned that your parents divorced when you were six. They actually separated.

30:13They didn't divorce for a very long time, but they did separate. Yeah. And your mother was the main breadwinner? Always. And she had this very interesting job on a quiz show. Yes. So my mother, my mother, when she came, she was from Chicago, when she came to New York, she was trying to be an actress. She would do freelance for a friend of hers who worked for Goodson and Todman, who were the game show people, because the game shows used to be in New York. They eventually all went out to California, but they used to be in New York. And she would write questions for, you know, so she worked on a lot of, she worked on shows, I don't know, I've Got a Secret and Play Your Hunch and What's My Line.