PARIS (AP) — “She’s messy. It can be messy. But it’s real.”
So says Cynthia Nixon — not simply of Miranda Hobbes, the character she’s embodied throughout virtually three many years, however of the present itself. “And Just Like That…,” HBO’s “Sex and the City” revival, has come into its personal in season three: much less preoccupied with pleasing everybody, and extra serious about telling the reality.
Reality, on this case, appears to be like like complexity. Ladies of their fifties with evolving identities. Not frozen in time, however altering, reckoning, reliving. Queerness that’s joyful however not polished. Grief with out melodrama. A pirate shirt with a bleach gap that by some means turns into a talisman of energy.
At its glittering European premiere this week, Nixon and costar Sarah Jessica Parker, flanked by Kristin Davis and Sarita Choudhury, spoke candidly with The Related Press about how the present has advanced into one thing deeper, rawer, and extra reflective of who they’re now.
A voice returns
Season three marks the return of Carrie Bradshaw’s iconic inner monologue — the voiceover that when outlined “Sex and the City” and gave thousands and thousands of ladies permission to relate their lives. That rhythmic intimacy is again, and never by chance.
“We’ve always loved the voiceover,” Parker mentioned. “It’s a rhythm — it’s part of the DNA.”
For Parker, it mirrors Carrie’s emotional readability. The character who as soon as floated by means of Manhattan chasing sneakers and column deadlines is now grounded in reinvention, loss, and cautious hope. She’s grown up and she or he’s now not hiding it.
“She doesn’t burst into tears or stomp out of the room anymore,” Parker mentioned. “She asks smart, patient questions. That’s not effort — that’s just her nature now.”
“People seem surprised that she is mature,” Parker added. “But that’s just basic developmental stuff — hopefully, simply by living, we get better at things. It’s not surprising. It’s just real.”
Warts and all
Miranda’s arc, which now features a late-in-life queer awakening, would be the present’s most radical contribution to tv. For Nixon, it was very important that this journey didn’t really feel sanitized.
“There’s never a ‘too late’ moment. Miranda comes to queerness at 55. That doesn’t mean everything that came before was wrong. It just means this is her now. And it’s messy. It can be messy. But it’s real.”
That embrace of imperfection is central to Nixon’s philosophy of storytelling, particularly on tv, the place long-running characters develop into a part of the cultural furnishings.
“Television puts someone in your living room, week after week. They’re imperfect, they make you laugh, and eventually you say, ‘I know that person. They’re my friend.’ That’s more powerful than one mythic, perfect film. That’s where the change happens.”
That change contains illustration. Nixon recalled how earlier generations of queer characters had been pressured to be flawless to justify their presence.
“There was a time when gay people on screen had to be saints or martyrs,” she mentioned. “Now, we can be characters like Miranda — who’ve had rich, fulfilling heterosexual lives and now stumble upon queerness, and not in a tidy way. There’s collateral damage. That’s important.”
The facility of lengthy kind
That depth, Nixon mentioned, comes not simply from character, however from the format. Not like movie, which requires decision in two hours, tv lets folks develop — and falter — in actual time.
“On long-running shows, if the writers are smart, they start to weave in the actor,” Nixon mentioned. “When I started, Miranda and I were very different. But now we’ve grown closer. We’re almost the same person — in temperament, in values.”
That closeness is mirrored within the materials. Season three narrows its scope, pulling focus again to the emotional cores of Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte. A number of aspect characters are gone, together with Che Diaz, and what stays is a cleaner, extra character-driven story.
“I think one of the great things about our show is we show women in their 50s whose lives are very dramatic and dynamic,” Nixon mentioned. “You get to this age and there’s a lot going on — if you choose to keep moving forward.”
Mates, friction, and freedom
Kristin Davis, who performs Charlotte, famous that these life shifts come quick and sometimes overlap.
“She really starts to unravel,” Davis mentioned. “But the joy is her friends are there.”
Sarita Choudhury, who performs actual property powerhouse Seema, echoed that sense of late-blooming autonomy.
“She’s feeling that, if you have your own business, your own apartment, your own way, you get to say what you want,” Choudhury mentioned. “There’s power in that.”
It’s a delicate rebuke to the long-held media narrative that midlife is a decline. In “And Simply Like That…”, it’s the other.
Not simply style — declaration
Style, as ever, is current — however now it feels extra private than aspirational. Parker described insisting on sporting a ripped classic Vivienne Westwood shirt with a bleach gap in a key scene.
“I didn’t care,” she mentioned. “It had to be in an important scene. It meant something.”
Even the present’s iconic heels, nonetheless clacking by means of New York’s brownstone-lined streets, really feel louder this season. They’re not simply equipment. They’re declarations.
And sure, Carrie is writing once more, although not her standard musings. A “historical romance” mission, talked about solely briefly on display screen up to now, hints on the present’s consolation with poking enjoyable at itself and its heroine’s often pretentious aptitude. If early opinions are proper, it could be one of many season’s most enjoyably ludicrous storylines.
“And Just Like That…” is a present that’s discovered to stroll — loudly — into its subsequent chapter. It might be messy. But it surely’s actual.
“You’re better today than you were ten years ago,” Parker mentioned. “That’s not just Carrie — that’s everyone.”
___
Season three of “And Just Like That…” premiered on Thursday on HBO Max
