Our first guest tonight is an Emmy,
a Grammy and Tony-winning actress,
you know from shows such as "Sex and the City,"
"Ratched," and the new HBO series, "The Gilded Age."
She executive produces and stars in
"And Just Like That,"
with new episodes premiering Thursdays on HBO Max.
Let's take a look.
-I have a favor to ask,
and it involves manual labor and you two coming to Brooklyn.
-Well, how can we say no? -Aww.
-Oh, no, no. I'm asking, how can we say no?
-You can't.
We need a huge turnout on Saturday to finish painting
the women's shelter I've been working on with Nya,
and it would be so great if you guys would come help.
-I'm there, and I'll bring the kids.
I'm a really good painter.
-Carrie?
-Oh, well,
when I was on stage crew in high school,
they asked me, "Please stop painting,"
so I will happily write a check.
-You can't be the white lady who just writes a check.
If I can paint, you can paint.
-Please welcome back to the show,
Cynthia Nixon, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-I am so happy to have you back here!
-I am so happy to be here!
-In a studio full of people, no less.
-So lovely. -It's not bad, right?
-And a band, even. -And a band.
We did see each other right before --
we were talking backstage -- right before the pandemic.
Late February of 2020. -Yes.
-We were at the Pen Awards in New York City,
and it was a lovely evening and a few people
were starting to do fist pumps, and I was like,
"Come on, guys."
And yet here we are, a few years later.
-Yeah, some people are ahead of the curve.
Not me, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, Christine Baranski and I were there together,
presenting an award to Tom Stoppard.
-And you and Christine Baranski
are now playing sisters in "The Gilded Age,"
which is on HBO, which is very exciting.
But when you were first on Broadway together,
she was your mother.
-Yes, in 1983,
which I can't believe is almost 40 years ago,
she was playing my mother, and I didn't realize
she was really too young to be my mother.
But now we're sisters. That's good. That's good.
-You know, right after, I feel like,
maybe the last time we talked,
I saw another very young Cynthia Nixon.
I had never seen the movie "Amadeus."
-Oh, yeah.
-And you're in "Amadeus." -Yes.
-You just show up as a maid. -Yes. Yes.
-That must have been one of your first film roles.
-Oh, I had been acting about five years at that point.
-Well, I'm sorry that I've missed the earlier work.
-"Little Darlings"? You haven't seen "Little Darlings?"
-I'll put it on the list.
-Well, but it was such a big deal for me,
because me and my friends,
Milos Forman, who directed that,
was our absolute favorite director
from "Ragtime" and from "Hair."
And I was in 11th grade,
and I had already been around the block a little bit.
I kind of knew it was five months in Czechoslovakia.
I had never been to Europe,
but I said after like, 6,000 auditions and they cast me,
I said, "I really want to do this part,
but I'm in high school, and could you, respectfully,
if you don't use me for two days in a row,
could you fly me back to New York?"
And they did.
-So you went back and forth the whole time?
-Yes. Yes. Because I knew, even --
I'd been around a little bit, since I was 11, 12,
and I knew they were just going to put me in a hotel
for months on end,
and it was going to be challenging in 11th grade.
-Yeah. -So they tested me.
First, they flew me out for a 45 minute rehearsal.
-Really? -To see if I balked.
And I just, you know, just smiled and smiled,
and they flew me back and forth like, five or six times.
-You must have gotten so many miles.
-I did.
-Also, I'm glad you said this.
Please don't take this the wrong way.
When you said you were going to be there for five months,
you're not in a lot of the movie.
-No, that's what I mean. Right. -Yeah.
-But I know, I was very, very low on the pecking order,
and they're just going to throw me in a hotel room
and forget about me and a few months later, be like,
"Let's get that girl out here for that one thing.
She's got that one line."
-Now the other thing about the last time you were on this show,
you were running for governor of this state and you didn't win,
but the guy who did win, things didn't go great for.
-And just like that,
Andrew Cuomo was out of a job.
-And just like that. What a lovely tie-in.
What a lovely tie-in.
-You know, the difference between him and me is,
neither of us are governor.
-Yeah.
-But I've still got to keep my Emmys.
-That's true. He didn't even get to keep his one Emmy.
So congratulations on that as well.
So "And Just Like That,"
I imagine all of you must have been somewhat hesitant
to return to this beloved franchise.
I think we were hesitant and also very excited.
Kind of equal measure because, of course, we love the show.
We love each other. We love our characters, all that.
But again, to revisit this show
that everybody loves so much, so iconic --
and also, I guess my main concern
that I kept stating over and over again was,
if we go back, it can't be a reboot.
It can't just be this same show almost 25 years later.
We're very different people. The world is different.
It was always an unbelievably white show,
which was not so cool back then,
and it's really, we obviously, definitely have to change that.
So it was also a chance to hopefully, you know,
we got a lot right in that first show,
but we got some things wrong
and we got a chance to go back and change them.
-You did something that I feel like a lot of people
have done in recent years,
which is, you went back and binged the show itself.
-Yes. Yes.
-So were you watching it as it went through?
Would you watch each week when you were making the show?
-Oh, definitely.
-But had you never watched it all at once like that?
-No. No. -Yeah?
-I mean, it was delightful.
-I mean, I did it.
We've talked about it, but I did it with my wife.
I'd never seen it.
We binged it together,
and I fell in love with you ladies.
I'm going to just be honest. -Aww.
[ Applause ]
-Well, I think that, you know, we were one of those things
that people turned to during the quarantine
and really binged, you know?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Well, I think that any...
It was funny the shows people found,
because it was obviously a deeply lonely time.
And this was, you know, this show has always been
about friendship and connection,
and so it makes total sense to me that it would be
a show that people would sort of find comfort in
during those difficult times. -Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, as we were all locked in our houses too,
it's like, you know, a bunch of people
strutting around the city, going to fabulous restaurants
and wearing beautiful clothes and doing all the things.
-And it is such a snapshot of that era of New York.
It is. -Wild. Wild. Yes.
Matthew Broderick always says this thing
when he's walking down the street with Sarah Jessica
and he sees a girl in a particular
kind of an outfit and heels, and he always says,
"You did that.
That's your fault."
-That is very true. To this day, that is very true.
One thing that you've also changed
about this second iteration of the show --
the subway.
We did not see much of the subway
in the first "Sex and the City."
Maybe never even once.
-Yeah, I think there was, Carrie for about 30 seconds,
briefly flirted with taking a bus,
and then someone said to her, "You're on the bus.
Why do you have to take the bus if your photo is on the bus?"
And she was like, "Yeah."
Yeah, I mean, I certainly, in non-COVID times,
I'm on the subway every day.
In COVID times I'm on the subway maybe once a week.
-Yeah.
-And yeah, I mean, I always felt like Miranda --
you know, Miranda works in Manhattan.
She lives in Brooklyn.
-She was probably on the subway.
-I think she was on the subway, but we never showed it.
-We just never showed it. -Yeah.
-It's a different era now.
People people deeply want to see the subway.
-They want to see the subway.
-Because, let me say something about New York City,
if you've never been here,
the subway is better than it's ever been.
[ Laughter ]
And now you have two shows on at the same time,
and they both take place in New York
with a 140-year time gap. -Yes.
-So "The Gilded Age" is late 1800s New York City.
Do you enjoy the costume-drama-y type of show?
-I do.
I mean, it's, you know,
the corsets are not really your friend.
They're your adversary. -Sure.
-But certainly, the clothes are amazingly beautiful and the wigs
and all of the sets.
And then we shot in a lot of real historic mansions
in Troy, New York and in Newport, Rhode Island.
And I mean, it's gorgeous to look at,
and it's a period not unlike our own
where you have these --
then, they were millionaires who appeared out of nowhere
because of the Industrial Revolution
and the railroads and business was booming.
And, you know, they built these palatial mansions.
Now we have these billionaires who appear out of nowhere
because of the tech boom and they're, you know,
visiting outer space and stuff.
So it's similar, kind of like, people with so much money
they really just don't know what to do with it.
-They don't know what to do with it.
At least 140 years ago,
they built houses that are still here.
I don't know what this space thing is gonna give us.
I have one thing I got to say.
We've talked about Steve in the past.
-Yeah.
-Steve's not having a great time in the new show.
-He is not. -Yeah.
You know I love Steve.
-I love Steve, too.
-Feel like I don't know why you guys did him like that.
-Awww.
-And part of it is, you know,
that I have a very good Steve impression.
-Would you like to share it with me?
-I would like to.
-Would you like to share it with all of us?
-Well, I'd just like to share it with you,
but if they want to watch... -Okay.
[ Applause ]
-[ As Steve ] Oh, Miranda.
-Oh, that's very good.
It's very good.
-You're a very good actor.
-If I was blindfolded,
I would never know it was not David.
-You guys, that is Cynthia Nixon.
"And Just Like That" and "The Gilded Age"
are both available now on HBO and HBO Max.