Cynthia Nixon Thinks Miranda Hobbes Always Had “Lesbianic Qualities” On Sex and the City

This year marks Miranda Hobbes’ first time celebrating Pride Month as an out, queer woman (honestly, there should probably be an And Just Like That... episode about Miranda grappling with the corporatization of Pride), and Cynthia Nixon is celebrating by opining on her longtime character’s queerness. According to Nixon, Miranda’s sexual identity is nothing new and in a recent interview with Variety, the actress admitted Miranda’s AJLT story arc was probably a long time coming.

“Even though she was only really interested in men, I think that Miranda had many other queer and frankly, lesbianic qualities about her,” Nixon said. At the time, though, the conversation around gay women was fairly minimal, and Nixon feels Miranda was “a stand-in for the gay women we didn’t have.”

Nixon herself came out in 2004, during the last season of Sex and the City and has been married to education activist Christine Marinoni since 2012. So, when AJLT’s showrunner, Michael Patrick King, approached the actress about Miranda coming out as queer, Nixon was all for it.

“I was like, ‘Sure, why not!'” she said. “If we’re trying to do different stuff, and show different worlds, and show different aspects of these characters, why not do that?”

Of course, this meant Miranda would have to end her marriage to Steve, and Nixon disagreed with King when it came to his original idea of how to go about doing that. Initially, King wanted Miranda to cheat on Steve with her professor, but Nixon shut that down. “I know we’re crossing a lot of boundaries here that people have a lot of opinions about, but for me a boundary that I don’t want to see Miranda cross is dating her professor,” she said. “That’s not OK with me.”

So, Nixon suggested Sara Ramírez as her love interest and Che Diaz was born. Now, as the cast prepares for season two of the show, they’re grappling with the audience’s reaction to Ramirez’s character. “I don’t know what to make of it,” Nixon said in another story for Variety. “I mean, I think you’ve got a lot of marriage-police people out there.” Nixon also believes part of the response had to do with the nature of Miranda and Che’s relationship, which isn’t like the normal portrayals of “girl-on-girl action that people across the board think is really sexy.”

Whether people like it or not, Che will likely return for season two of the HBO Max show, as they try to figure out their relationship with Miranda after movie to Los Angeles. Maybe, they will return to the city just in time for pride. Something tells us Che has a float in the parade.