Of course, no historical drama is just a historical drama. The tensions that underpin The Gilded Age—in particular, its exploration of the economic inequality that accompanied the rise of the new millionaire class and the poorer communities it exploited—are eerily timely. After all, the show is hardly a museum piece when the millionaires are now billionaires, and the sources of income are no longer railroads or mining, but the data surveillance and worker exploitation that exist in the shadow of Big Tech. Given that some of the core tenets of Nixon’s political platform were tackling income inequality, establishing universal healthcare, and providing support for working-class families, did those themes resonate with her too? “There are so many parallels,” she says. “The crushing poverty, the issues of women fighting to be treated equally, of people of color and African American people fighting to be treated equally, and immigrants grappling with their place in a new country. I would say we’ve made some progress—although in terms of immigration, I’m not even sure that’s true—but these are definitely themes that are very, very alive today.”
No less political, albeit in an entirely different form, were the circumstances of Nixon’s return to the beloved lawyer Miranda Hobbes in And Just Like That…. Conversations around reviving Sex and the City first began during the early months of the pandemic; by January 2021, HBO had ordered a full series, to a rapturous response from the show’s ever-loyal fans. But for Nixon, returning to SATC came with caveats—one of which was that the show would, well, no longer be the show at all. “When we were in discussions about whether to go back, I really wanted to be sure it wasn’t a reboot,” says Nixon, who also ended up directing an episode of the series. “The world is very different now—not just because of COVID, not just because of Trump, not just because of Black Lives Matter, not just because of global warming. We’re absolutely a comedy, but to do a light-hearted show that didn’t acknowledge any of those things would have seemed incredibly tone-deaf. So I’m very proud of it in that sense.”
Unexpectedly, many of the most heated conversations surrounding the new show have centered on Miranda—more specifically, the whirlwind romance she shared with Sara Ramírez’s nonbinary comedian and podcast host Che Diaz, her implied alcohol dependence, and the fraying relationship with her husband (and ultimate fan-favorite SATC man, if the online chatter has been anything to go by) Steve Brady, played by David Eigenberg. Given the internet’s fervid interest in the show’s most controversial love triangle since Carrie-Aidan-Big, I feel I almost need to read Nixon her Miranda rights (so to speak) before she goes on record about anything relating to the subject. How closely has she been following the discourse? “I think I’m… fairly aware?” Nixon says, before breaking out into a guilty laugh. “I get a sense by what people ask me about it in interviews, mostly.”
