Cynthia Nixon is a born and bred New Yorker, which might explain why she’s spent so much of her long, illustrious career telling the city’s stories. Of course, the best known is that of Miranda Hobbes, the witty, wonderfully cynical lawyer from Sex and the City and its (admittedly controversial) sequel And Just Like That.
But today — despite this little journalist having done the Sex and the City tour in New York the day prior — we’re talking about The Gilded Age, a series about the upper society of 1880s New York, before the bright lights of Times Square and the endless skyscrapers.
The series follows the elite families residing on Fifth Avenue. There’s the Van Rhijn family, led by the formidable Agnes (Christine Baranski), whose husband died years prior. She lives with her son, Oscar (Blake Ritson), who is incredibly fabulous and secretly queer, her sweet niece Marian (Louisa Jacobs) who is new to New York when the series kicks off, and her sunny, endlessly kind sister Ada Forte (Née Brook).
It’s Cynthia who plays this role and she admits that her soft-hearted, optimistic portrayal of Ada is a world away from both her tough-as-nails on-screen sister, Agnes and the role that catapulted her to fame more than two decades ago.
“Ada really couldn’t be more different than Miranda,” Cynthia chuckles to TV WEEK.
“And for the first three years, I was doing And Just Like That and The Gilded Age at the same time, which was wonderful, but a little schizophrenic kind of feat.”
While you might assume it was Ada’s warmth and optimism that won Cynthia over, she insists that was only part of it.
“At the time when I started playing Miranda, I had been acting for almost 20 years and I played many more characters like Ada, so she’s definitely in my wheelhouse. But she is so particular, and so special,” Cynthia explains.
Instead, the real drawcard was two pronged: a chance to work with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, and her long-time friend, Christine Baranski, who plays her sharp-tongued sister Agnes Van Rhijn.
“Immediately when I got the offer, I knew they were trying to work out Christine Baranski’s schedule. She and I have known each other for 40 plus years, we’re very fond of each other and I am just a huge fan of hers,” she gushes.
While Ada may have surprised fans at first, Cynthia says that there’s a lot of herself woven in between. After all, Cynthia has spent her life speaking up for causes she believes in, from public education to Palestine to challenging then-governor Andrew Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic primary.
To the casual watcher of The Gilded Age, Ada might not be the most outspoken activist, but her character works with a quiet tenacity to bolster the causes she believes in.
“I relate to Ada a lot,” Cynthia admits.
“It’s not a very glamorous word, but Ada is very relational. She’s so much about her interpersonal relationships, whether it’s with her niece or with her sister or the man who would become her husband. She’s very connected to people, and I think that was a big contrast with Miranda.
“And I think I’m very that way. I’m really kind of a little bit of a homegirl like Ada, and very emotional in her relationships.”
In The Gilded Age season three, Cynthia and Christine’s long-time bond is on show in the form of sisterly bickering, as Ada finds herself replacing Agnes as the head of the household. Now, as season four begins, it becomes clear that Agnes is working on becoming head of the household once more.
But who does Cynthia think will come out on top? Well, refusing to play favourites, she believes its anyone’s game.
“I feel that Agnes has a lot of bark and bite. She’s definitely the more demonstrative one,” she explains.
“But I think there are times when Agnes’ passions get the most of her — not to say that Ada’s passions don’t also get away with her this season — but it’s a lifelong pattern between these two. The more emotional and histrionic Agnes gets, the more practical and sensible and grounded Ada gets.
“It’s a balancing act.”
It’s a balancing act Cynthia knows well, after years of juggling both Miranda and Ada at once. But while the world may always see her as Miranda Hobbes, it turns out the character closest to her heart has been hiding in a corset on Fifth Avenue all along.
You can watch The Gilded Age seasons one to four on Paramount+.
