Since the original series' premiere in 1998, the Sex and the City universe has included LGBTQ+ stories. Carrie’s and Charlotte’s best friends were gay men, Stanford and Anthony, who eventually became a couple, and Samantha explored a relationship with a woman for a time. With its high fashion, focus on women’s sexual agency, and friendship as the central love story, that world has long appealed to queer audiences. With And Just Like That..., now in its third season, queer people are centered in the story. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) came out in the reboot’s first season, Charlotte’s child Rock came out as nonbinary, and other queer characters, including Anthony (Mario Cantone) and the much-debated Che (Sara Ramirez), have proliferated during its three seasons.
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Nixon, who came out in the early aughts was The Advocate’s Pride cover star this year, sporting a “dyke” tee in some of the photos. She was integral to Miranda becoming a queer character following a brief conversation with creator Michael Patrick King. For Pride Month, The Advocate spoke with cast members Nixon (Miranda), Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie), Sarita Choudhury (Seema), and Nicole Ari Parker (Lisa, a.k.a. LTW) about the importance of telling queer stories and why they're proud to be part of a series that continues to do so.
Cynthia Nixon and Dolly Wells in And Just LIke That...Craig Blankenhorn/Max
Sarah Jessica Parker
Parker has played the series’ anchor, Carrie Bradshaw, for nearly 30 years, through six original seasons, two movies, and the reboot. She shares eloquently about what centering the queer community continues to mean to her.
“I always felt so grateful that the show had found, I'm going to say, sisterhood and fraternity and companionship fairly early on with the LGBTQ+ community. That there was a natural affinity and affection made sense to me, and we were really grateful,” Parker says.
She addresses the climate under the Trump administration that seeks to demonize and erase LGBTQ+ people.
“It is sort of hard to address this particular chapter in our history right now, talking about our show, because I feel like it diminishes actually the kind of very consequential pain that this community is feeling and experiencing. But the ways in which we can talk about this community and its integration in the lives of these characters on the show, in the ways in which they are real, is wonderful because that's the way we do exist in this world,” she adds.
“That is the far bigger story that we are part of each other's lives. And the idea that we've somehow been able to suggest or diminish the roles that these people in this community have played in so many millions of lives that people aren't even aware of. It's not only a great disservice and deeply hurtful, obviously, but it's a cruel swipe, and it's unfortunate for those who are doing it," she says.
Cynthia Nixon
This season, Miranda explores new sapphic relationships, including a one-night stand with a virgin nun played by Rosie O’Donnell.
“Michael Patrick King has been writing parts for Rosie that he hoped Rosie would do since the show started, and they never worked out,” Nixon says. “So it was great to finally hit with this one, and if one was going to work out, this was the perfect one to work out. It's on the one hand, it's such a perfect part for her. And on the other hand, it's so unexpected, right?”
Cynthia Nixon and Dolly Wells in And Just LIke That... Craig Blankenhorn/Max
As for Miranda’s more central relationship with Joy (Dolly Wells), Nixon thinks the character she’s played on and off for decades may have met her match.
“Certainly with Steve and with a lot of the men that she's dated in the past, she has been sort of the dominant partner, and she's very confident about her brain and always thinks she's the smart one. I think when she meets Joy, she feels like, wow, this woman's intelligence and sophistication and experience on a global stage doing exactly the kind of work that Miranda is trying to do is really dazzling,” Nixon says. “And joy appears so incredibly confident, but also very, like Miranda, actually, the confidence is just real, but is also masking a deep insecurity and uncertainty. And so it's wonderful to see these two people inch toward each other and then leap back and inch toward each other and misunderstand and all that.”
Sarah Jessica Parker and Sarita Choudhury in And Just Like That...Craig Blankenhorn/Max
Nicole Ari Parker
In 1995, Nicole Ari Parker, who plays documentarian and socialite Lisa Todd Wexley on And Just Like That..., made her film debut in Maria Maggenti’s sweet sapphic film The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (opposite The L Word’s Laurel Holloman). She went on to star in the classic Boogie Nights. This season on And Just Like That..., Lisa’s storyline includes highlighting the lives of overlooked Black women in history as part of her documentary. Parker says it's these underserved stories are crucial.
“I feel really proud to be a part of this moment in history that is really not even amplifying the fact that a family has a trans daughter or a nonbinary son or a Black family that lives on the Upper East Side. … It's normalizing things, like these are the people you stand in line with at the coffee truck, the people who are on the subway with you,” Parker says. “We're all going to get wet when it rains. And it's gentle. I mean, it had a very strong effect on people. People lost their minds when season 2 kicked in. But I think that it's wonderful that they're still just writing the stories and we're still shooting them and we're still acting them, because we know it's real and you can make any judgment you want, but I'm still scrambling eggs in the morning, just like Miranda.”
“Well, she probably has granola and yogurt,” Parker jokes.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Sarita Choudhury in And Just Like That...Craig Blankenhorn/Max
Sarita Choudhury
A ringer real estate agent and the heir apparent to Samantha Jones in terms of making the rules, Choudhury’s Seema Patel is Carrie’s friend and often voice of reason. A veteran actor whose debut film role was opposite Denzel Washington in 1991’s Mississippi Masala, Choudhury says the central love story of friendship among women on the series is “the story of my life.”
"Even in history, when we talk to our moms or our grandmothers, they're always confessing some cheeky story about what their friend and theirs did, not about their husband and the family. It's always about Auntie this, and my best friend," she says. "So we've had it for generations where there's trust and secrecy in your tribe, which is your friends, your sisters."
She praises the series for telling queer stories during difficult political times.
“It was my hope that this show would remain current, but what I love even more, it remains current by taking themes that are trying to be made to disappear and making them full central love stories with heart and soul, which I think is a much braver, stronger political move than just only fighting for the rights, which is also important,” Choudhury says. “But just to take a narrative and be like, this narrative is forefront. You can't do more than that in a show that is global and every age group, every gender watches, what a great idea.”
