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[0:00] Cynthia Nixon: Hi, I'm Cynthia Nixon, and you're listening to And The Tony Goes To...

[0:22] Ilana Levine: Have you ever dreamed of winning a Tony Award? Did you ever practice your Tony acceptance speech in the bathroom mirror? Did you grow up watching the Tony Awards every year? Do you have a collection of Tony Award shows on VHS tape that you refuse to throw out? Well, then this is the podcast for you. Every week, I interview your favorite Tony Award winners, and together we go down memory lane as my guests share intimate and never-before-shared details about their Tony experience. By the end of every episode, you're going to feel like you just won a Tony. Welcome to And The Tony Goes To... I'm your host, Ilana Levine. Welcome today's Tony winner, Cynthia Nixon.

[1:08] Cynthia Nixon: The Tony goes to Cynthia Nixon.

[1:14] Cynthia Nixon: Thank you so much. David Lindsay-Aber wrote a play about the nature of inconsolable grief, that was so understated and nuanced that it actually seemed to breathe on the page. And Dan Sullivan took that play and taught it to walk and talk so perfectly that he made you believe that you were watching real life and not a play at all. I was one of the five actors lucky enough to appear in that production, and that is why I'm getting this now. I want to thank David and Dan and the four incredibly talented and all-around wonderful actors that were in the play with me, the crew, the designers, Manhattan Theater Club, and Emily Gerson Sainz, who has represented me with unfailing intelligence and unwavering devotion for the last 15 years. I cannot tell you what it means to get a Tony to a theater junkie such as myself. You have made me so, so happy tonight. Thank you so much.

[2:25] Ilana Levine: Hello, Cynthia Nixon. Hello, Ilana Levine. Do you remember making that speech?

[2:33] Cynthia Nixon: Um, sort of. You know, it's like photos from childhood. Do you remember the actual moment, or do you remember the film of the moment?

[2:47] Ilana Levine: So let's go back and see, walking through that night, do you remember hearing your name called?

[2:55] Cynthia Nixon: I do. I think I do.

[2:59] Ilana Levine: Did you think you might win?

[3:02] Cynthia Nixon: I did.

[3:04] Ilana Levine: So you had been nominated once before.

[3:07] Cynthia Nixon: Yes, and I did not win, and I did not, you know, the first time I was nominated, I did not win, and that was not a surprise not to win.

[3:19] Ilana Levine: So what is it like going in when you think sort of like the guys at OTB are saying like, I'm betting, right? What did that feel like? Is there more pressure or less pressure going in that way?

[3:36] Cynthia Nixon: Oh, gosh, I don't know the answer to that. It's always a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure. And of course, it's one of those things, it's kind of like going to nursery school for the first day and your parents leaving you there. You're sitting comfortably in your seat, watching an awards show that you've maybe been to before, but certainly watched on television before, in my case, many, many times. But the idea that one is going to leave the comfort of one's seat in one's, you know, beautiful, but maybe scary to navigate in dress and shoes, and walk down an enormous, you know, aisle and then up onto the stage, it feels like you really should have attendance. Like there should be, you know, there should be a groomsman standing by the seat of each nominee, or a, you know, male or female, waiting to give you their arm and walk you down. Because it's so, it's scary that walk, you just think, I'm gonna fall, I'm gonna fall, I'm gonna fall.

[4:52] Ilana Levine: Well, you did not fall.

[4:54] Cynthia Nixon: It's just before we go on, it makes me think of a story. The third time I was nominated for a Tony, I was sitting there waiting for the show to start, and I was seated opposite Stockard Channing, who was also nominated in my category. And I said, oh, Stockard, your dress is so beautiful. And she said, yours is so beautiful too. I said, thank you. It's very hard to walk in. She said, mine too, but I don't think that's going to be a problem for either of us tonight.

[5:24] Ilana Levine: Yes.

[5:25] Cynthia Nixon: Stockard Channing is always right.

[5:28] Ilana Levine: And she was right.

[5:29] Cynthia Nixon: And she said, she said the truth that we both knew, but it was nice to have it put into the air. So tell me what thoughts ran through your mind while we just listened to your speech together.

[5:42] Cynthia Nixon: So when you asked me to do this, I did go and find it on YouTube and watch it. I hadn't, of course, seen it in many years. Um, and I guess the, the, the main thought that I had was one is so nervous at a, at a, at a moment like this, that one tries so hard or I try so hard to remember everything that I had wanted to say. Um, but in fact, I just look, um, I think too calm and I feel like the thing that I had planned to say, I was so nervous. I would forget some of it that I practiced it over and over and over. And as a result, I think it sounds very, um, rehearsed in a way that I wish it didn't, but you know, this is small, small gripes.

[6:37] Ilana Levine: So you didn't write it down.

[6:39] Cynthia Nixon: I had, I had written it down, but I did not want to, you know, be reading it from a paper.

[6:46] Ilana Levine: I think, yeah.

[6:48] Cynthia Nixon: So I want to talk about the play itself and the part that led us to the moment that we just shared in listening to the speech, which was the role of Becca in David Lindsay-Aber's Pulitzer Prize winning play Rabbit Hole.

[7:05] Ilana Levine: Yes.

[7:06] Cynthia Nixon: What was it and that, that you, that you felt about this part and this play that made you want to do it?

[7:17] Cynthia Nixon: Um, I love the play. I love the play. We did a reading of it. This is in 2006, keep in mind. Um, so this is a play about inconsolable grief and walking through the world with this grief and everybody wants you to be, get over it, but you're never going to get over it. And so what was amazing about the play was how many people who had lost children, which is what the play is about, um, who came and waited for us afterwards and spoke to us about it and said how right he got it. Because I think David, in addition to being an incredible playwright, um, did a lot of research. And just as there, there are stages of development, you know, each child is different, but there are stages develop of development that you can recognize at six months and at three years and at 12 years, right?

There are also, when you have lost a child, um, there are patterns, um, that are very recognizable. And he really did a wonderful job chronicling that. And in our play, as often in real life, um, parents usually take one or the other tact, which is to talk about that lost person all the time and have their photo everywhere and, and not want any of their objects to go away. And other, other, the, another approach is the people who want to hardly ever speak of that person and remove, get rid of, or remove all the objects from sight and not have lots of photos around. And so often when couples lose a child, one of the things that makes it even harder is that one, one parent feels one way and one parent feels the other, which living in the same household is very hard to navigate, obviously.

But the thing about the play, in addition to getting it right and getting it right for the people in the audience who had experienced it, you also just know something is true, even if you haven't experienced it because it has the ring of truth. But the third thing is, um, it seemed to so many people who had seen it like a meditation on, on 9-11, which had been five years before. And so many people who came to see that, um, felt that way. And, and in fact, I think that was kind of the, I don't want to speak for him, but that was the motivating, uh, idea for David in writing that play or motivating feeling.

[10:06] Ilana Levine: Um, were you scared to take on a part like this?

[10:11] Cynthia Nixon: Um, I don't remember. Um, it was such a part that I could tell it was so, um, right for me. Um, the, the, the now ridiculous and embarrassing thing is the play ends very quietly. There's not a big, there is a climax where my character, Becca, meets with the young man who had inadvertently killed her son by hitting him with a car. And you think there's going to be some magical piece of information that he's going to convey like he was drunk or, you know, something. And in fact, there is nothing, um, conveyed, but still it is the, the crucial moment that begins to, to, to start the healing. But the last scene is just very quiet with the husband and wife, John Slattery and I sitting there. And I remember talking to Dan Sullivan and saying, I just feel like the play doesn't have a strong thing at the end and we need to re David needs to rewrite it. And, you know, and I'm not sure what it is, but it needs to be a bigger climate, you know?

[11:21] Ilana Levine: Yeah.

[11:22] Cynthia Nixon: Dan was very polite and patient and he listened and he said, you know, perhaps you're right. And perhaps you're not. And that's something, if you accept this job that we'll discover in rehearsal. But if you feel like you cannot take this part without that change being made, you should pass.

[11:40] Ilana Levine: Yeah.

[11:42] Cynthia Nixon: Which was an extremely, as a Dan, you know, level-headed thing to say to an obnoxious actress, which is what I turned out to be in that case. And in fact, of course, no, no real changes were made to that scene and it was exactly perfect.

[11:56] Ilana Levine: And you felt once you were doing it, that it made sense as it was, there was no battle going on once you were working on the play.

[12:03] Cynthia Nixon: Oh, absolutely not.

[12:05] Ilana Levine: Yeah.

[12:07] Cynthia Nixon: Um, I remember as, as your friend and audience member, it was hard to recall a time where you were in the company of an audience that was having so many, uh, collective reactions and audible reactions. The, the thing that people may not remember is a, just by the way, how funny the play was also, which was so shocking and wonderful as a release, because it's really hard to breathe through much of it, but also like the audible sounds of crying and, or trying not to cry and nose running and all of that. Do you remember what it was like to sort of receive all that or act with that soundtrack going on?

[12:58] Cynthia Nixon: Um, I remember, I guess what I remember is the scene that I talked about before, where she has a, an afternoon meeting with the young man who inadvertently killed her son. That's the moment where she cries and it's the only time that she cries in the play. So, um, for, you know, for me, that was, um, uh, you know, that was like a daunting, it's like your triple axel, right? It's like, if you don't, if you don't execute your triple axel, you know, the judges are going to mark you down. Right.

[13:40] Cynthia Nixon: One night that Michael Patrick King, who was the writer and director of Sex and the City, came. I think it was to a matinee, I'm not sure. Anyway, he came to a performance, probably it was an evening. And it was the one time that I really just didn't cry. And I was, I was, I think I psyched myself out so much because he was there. And what was amazing to me, I felt so terrible. And we did our curtain call, and the curtain came down, and I was, I was so embarrassed and disappointed in myself. And I said, I didn't cry today. I didn't cry. I didn't cry. I can't believe it. I didn't cry. I had this person out there I care, whose opinion I care about so much. I didn't cry. And John Gallagher, Jr. said, I feel like I wasn't really there for you today.

And it was so amazing. And I feel like it was really on me that moment. But I have to say, I had never really understood until that moment, what I was getting from him in the scene. How important that was, that it was really a dance, do you know? And both partners had to be dancing just so. I do remember the quietness that you're talking about. I think that that's what I was trying to convey in my Tony speech about how beautifully Dan had directed it, and how much realism there was, and how few histrionics really there were in the performance. And so I think that was one of the things that really got people, because the performances and everything about the set was incredibly naturalistic. One of the brilliant things about Dan's production was, this is a play about people who are stuck, right?

And they don't really move in the play. They move a fraction. They move a hair. It's the hair that is the beginning of the healing, but it's very small, right? And so rather than having the audience feel like they're stuck, it was intense enough. What he did was, the play takes place in different rooms in the home, in the living room, in the dining room, in the bedroom of the dead boy, all these different rooms. And what Dan had was so many of those rooms built, and then the set would rotate, and we would walk with... Often, if you are on a rotating set, the lights go out. When I was in The Real Thing, the lights would go out, and it would rotate, and you would be in another room. But in this, the lights would dim slightly, and you could still see everything.

And you would walk with the actor into the next room, almost in a filmic way, where the next scene was going to be taking place. So it let you move so that you didn't feel like just pinned like a butterfly on a pin.

[17:02] Ilana Levine: Yeah, yeah, it's so true. And it was... I remember that set, like it was so beautiful, and the sound design, really every aspect of it was just perfectly integrated. You know, it was not lost on me, whether someone knows you personally, or just knows of you as a fan of your work, you are a theater child. You have lived and breathed theater from the time that you were very young. And so maybe in some ways, it was inevitable that someone who had their Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours of something by the time they were five, would then end up having a life in the thing, if they were talented, and you are. So to have been there that night... Can I say one thing before you ask the question?

[18:00] Cynthia Nixon: Yes, yes. I noticed in the speech that I hesitate before I say theater junkie. And I don't exactly remember what's happening there. But I think what's happening is what you're talking about, which is my impulse was to use a phrase that Sarah Jessica Parker uses, because she is also the thing you just described.

[18:25] Ilana Levine: Yeah.

[18:26] Cynthia Nixon: But she calls it a theater rat, which is, I think, so descriptive, right? It's like, you know, someone who's just always there at the theater and hanging around, right?

[18:36] Ilana Levine: Yes.

[18:37] Cynthia Nixon: But I think I thought about saying it, but thinking the wider audience won't know what that is. I went for junkie instead, but theater rat is the real phrase that would have been more truthful. I'm not a theater junkie, I'm also a theater junkie.

[18:57] Ilana Levine: Well, I'm so glad that you are able to say this and people can hear that now and understand. You made your Broadway debut at, were you 15 when you were cast in The Philadelphia Story?

[19:10] Cynthia Nixon: I was 14.

[19:11] Ilana Levine: You were 14, even younger. So was that a thrill?

[19:18] Cynthia Nixon: That was an amazing thrill. And I had not really done a lot of school plays and that kind of thing. And it was just such an amazing cast of people and Ellis Rabb, who I had seen his Royal Family when I was a kid and just admired the hell out of it. And also Lincoln Center to be performing at Lincoln Center on the Boulevard. It's huge. I had been doing film and television for a couple of years at that point. And so I was very naturalistic and very internalized. And so I would say, I would come home, my mother had been an actress when she was younger. And so she was my absolute acting teacher and coach and director and everything. And I would say, mom, look what they're wanting me to do. Isn't it awful? And just so loud and obvious and right. And my mother would say, no, that's good. You should do that. Right. Do that. And I was like, really? It's so gauche. So big. So big and obvious.

[20:30] Ilana Levine: Yeah. Well, and then there's the incredible story where you, I don't know that it has happened since that you were in two Broadway shows at once.

[20:37] Cynthia Nixon: Yes. Can you explain how you were in Hurlyburly and The Real Thing simultaneously? And I also want to know, was that, you know, we find that to be incredibly glamorous, and we have a very romantic notion of it. And it seemed to work really well, the timing of it. But I also wonder if you could tell me if it was scary and pressurized, like getting to the two theaters, if there was stress involved, or not. But I would love for you to just share this story that people kind of know of, but maybe not really the specifics of.

[21:17] Cynthia Nixon: So when I was 17, I was cast by Mike Nichols in The Real Thing, which was a Tom Stoppard play starring Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Christine Baranski and Peter Gallagher. We went out of town to Boston, we were a hit in Boston, we came into Broadway, we were a hit on Broadway. We were running not for very long when Mike Nichols gave me a script, which for a script that was then at that point called the Untitled David Rabe play. And it was full of stars. And so he listed all of the movie stars that were in it. So it said like, William Hurt is Eddie, Sigourney Weaver is Darlene, Harvey Keitel is Phil, Jerry Stiller is Artie, Judith Ivey is Bonnie, Christopher Walken is Mickey, Cynthia Nixon is Donna, Yardley Smith is Debbie. Now, Yardley Smith is the voice of Lisa Simpson, and she was my understudy in The Real Thing. So what he meant is, come and be in this amazing play with all of these incredible actors, and Yardley will go on in your part in The Real Thing.

[22:38] Ilana Levine: Wow.

[22:39] Cynthia Nixon: So we rehearsed it while I played The Real Thing. We took it out of town to Chicago, Yardley took over The Real Thing. We were a hit in Chicago, we came off Broadway, we were hit off Broadway, we moved to Broadway, and we were a hit on Broadway. So at the same time, or I guess in between those two plays, Mike had also, at some point in there, Mike had directed and produced Whoopi Goldberg's one-woman show on Broadway that took her from complete obscurity to complete stardom in like three seconds. But it was a one-woman show, and so she didn't have a cast to hang out with, and she said, this is so lonely. I said, well, you know, I have this wonderful Hurlyburly cast. And I think Mike was also just like introducing her to the world because she, you know, what an unbelievable person and performer.

So we went out one night, Whoopi and the Hurlyburly cast. And just before that happened, the word on Broadway was that Yardley had to go to Texas to shoot a film, and her understudy had gone on, and her understudy was not cutting it. And people were panicked, and they scrambled, and they replaced her immediately, but it was all in flux. So it had always been a joke about these two parts. They were both, you know, juicy parts, but small parts. So I was in the first act and the third act of Hurlyburly, and I was in the second act of The Real Thing. And Mike and everybody had always joked that I could do both of these roles on the same evening. So I went up to him at the end of the Whoopi Goldberg, you know, drinks and dinner and said, you know, Mike, I heard there's problems with Yardley's replacement.

I could do both of these parts. And he didn't even miss a beat. And he said, I will call your agent in the morning. And he also said to me, I think right then and there, and it must have been right then and there because it wasn't like I was talking to Mike Nichols all the time. He said, we need to give you a raise. Or maybe he said it to my agent. We need to give her a raise when she comes back to The Real Thing because she has more credits now. She's done Hurlyburly now. So I started doing it almost immediately, and we did it a few times, like three or four times before we were sure that there was not some problem that we weren't thinking of before we publicized it. And as soon as we publicized it, people went crazy because, of course, it was such a gimmick.

It was such a thing. And so it was not pressureful at all. I was in my senior year of high school, and it was largely during the summer and then the fall of my freshman year of college. I had been in both plays for a long time. Neither part was difficult. But, you know, I'm sure all actors listening to this understand that when they've done a role, particularly they've done a role that was an important role for them at a particular time in their life, it's so linked to whatever was happening at that time. Like Christine Baranski in The Real Thing, she had just gotten married when we started, and she was pregnant through a lot of the run and had to leave eventually because she was, you know, too pregnant.

It's always linked to the things that are happening in your personal life as well. So it was really funny to have left a show and then go back to it while you were doing these other shows. It was sort of like being two different ages at the same time, like opening a door and it's like, oh, there I was when I was 20, and opening another door the same evening and like, oh, there's where I was when I was 25.

[26:31] Ilana Levine: Yeah. Yeah. But it was not pressureful. It was not pressureful at all. You would walk from one stage door to the other?

[26:37] Cynthia Nixon: Yeah, we had a production assistant who had come with us from Chicago, and he walked me, which was completely unnecessary, but whatever he did. So the Hurlyburly was at the Barrymore, and The Real Thing was at the, what is I guess now the Jacobs, that was the Plymouth. So, you know, Broadway people, particularly in that day, never walked on the avenues. We always walked through things. So I walked through the Hotel Edison, and I walked through a parking lot. So I never even had to go to 8th Avenue. And you had time to get out of one costume, get in your street clothes, get into your new costume, do a bow at The Real Thing at the end of the play, and then come back in time to do your last scene in the third act.

[27:21] Cynthia Nixon: So you could bow with both companies. I bowed with both companies and, you know, the character in Hurlyburly, we made a decision that by the time we meet up with her again in the third act, she's actually now officially a streetwalker. So I would come back to Hurlyburly and then do elaborate kind of hooker makeup. Like you do. At 18, on Broadway. And then, this is for another time, but then I got to see you play Juliet shortly thereafter, which was also a thrill.

[27:56] Ilana Levine: And I think maybe the only Shakespeare I've seen you do.

[28:00] Cynthia Nixon: Yes.

[28:01] Ilana Levine: Is that right?

[28:02] Cynthia Nixon: I'm afraid, yes. David Hyde-Pierce and I did a John Barton workshop, which I had such fun at, and there is footage of that out there. But yes, truly Juliet is the only. I had auditioned for every ingenue at The Public that they ever, ever, ever had, and I got none of them. But when I was 14, as we were talking about before, I made my debut in The Philadelphia Story, which was directed by Ellis Rapp, who was a grand old man of the theater and amazing person. And he said, he kept saying to me, you're 14, Juliet is 14. We must work on Juliet together. And so, I actually went to his house one time, and you know, the first scene that Juliet is in, Romeo and Juliet, it's mostly a scene between her mother and the nurse, and Juliet speaks very little in the scene. I'll look to like it, looking, liking, move, but no more deep will I in dark mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly, is basically the only thing she says in the scene.

[29:04] So, Ellis is a big talker, so we never got past that first scene, but he put it in my head that I must play Juliet because I am 14. So, I just spent, you know, hours and hours on it, year after year, on my own. So, I knew kind of the whole part. So, I think by the time I auditioned for that, I just, I had worked on it for all those years, and by the time I played it, I was like 21. And Anne Meara was my nurse, Jerry Stiller had been my keeper in Hurlyburly, and Anne Meara was, his wife was my nurse, and I, it was all jumbled up with my graduation from college. So, I had my graduation, and then I came to the Wednesday matinee of Romeo and Juliet, and Joseph Papp was still alive, and he was there, and they had a party for me, and they gave me a complete set of the Papp Shakespeare's, which had just come out, which are amazing resource that I still use all the time, and they gave me a big cake, which has a line of the nurses that she says about Romeo, ah, what learning is.

[30:21] And we were, our production was going through a lot of cuts at that time. It was long, and it was, you know, a little troubled, and so we were just cutting a lot of text. And so, Joseph Papp said to Anne Meara, please come and read Cynthia's Cake, because it's one of your lines. And she looked, and she saw it, and said, ah, what learning is. And Anne Meara, comedian that she was, said, I'm afraid to say it. I'm afraid if I say this line, someone's gonna cut it. Oh, my God, she was, she was such a special human. So quick on her feet.

[31:00] Ilana Levine: So quick on her feet.

[31:01] Cynthia Nixon: Yeah. All right. This is, we are coming to the end, and I have three kind of what I think of as lightning round questions.

[31:08] Ilana Levine: Okay.

[31:10] Cynthia Nixon: Let me tell a couple more things about my story first.

[31:13] Ilana Levine: Okay.

[31:14] Cynthia Nixon: Yes. One of the things that made it super duper special was that I received it from Bill Irwin and Patricia Neal. I'm just such fans of theirs, and Patricia Neal, you know, I don't know. I just, she was always one of my favorites, and it, I feel like who you get an award from, it just, it stays with you, and you feel like you're being, particularly Patricia Neal, who was quite elderly at that point, you just feel like theater history is shaking your hand through the ages.

[31:52] Ilana Levine: Can I just tell you what's so funny? My first question in the lightning round was going to be who presented you with your Tony.

[32:00] Cynthia Nixon: So you're so intuitive, but can I just say one thing about that before you go on? One of my favorite things in listening to that moment of you, of your name being called out is something that I think is unprecedented. Bill Irwin, like, shouts in glee when you win. He audibly shouts, like, it's like this impulse that he can't contain, which is something no one ever does. They kind of do that for the winner. And I just thought that has always struck me so deeply of how excited he was that your name had been called.

[32:38] Cynthia Nixon: No, I love Bill Irwin so dearly, and when I remember my young self that was just such a fan of his, I can't believe I know him. But I will tell you this story, which you can include in this podcast or not, which is when Christine and I had been dating each other a very short amount of time, I was asked to come to Nantucket and do Sideman, do a reading of a screenplay of Sideman doing Edie Falco's part. And Bill Irwin was asked to come and do Frank Wood's part in this screenplay that War and Light did of Sideman. And everybody else pretty much was the original cast, which was very intimidating. And we went in one of those tiny little planes that are scary to fly in. It feels like you're in a bug in the air. And so we all gathered at that little, wherever that airport was, like a private airport.

[33:39] Ilana Levine: Teterboro, probably.

[33:40] Cynthia Nixon: Yeah, one of those places. And I knew a lot of those guys, you know, Kevin Geer and Michael Mastro, whatever, you know. And Christine was there with me. And over the course of the weekend, so I guess even waiting in Teterboro, she was on the phone a lot because of her work. And I think it was like the budget season and she was anyway, she was on the phone constantly. And all of those sweet guys in Sideman made an assumption that she was like my agent or my publicist or something like that. Someone who worked with me. And they would say things like, wow, she's really working hard for you because she was on the phone constantly. And I was like, well, she isn't on the phone about me. And they said, yeah, but she travels with you. I mean, she came with you to this. That's really, that's devotion. That's hard to find in a representative, you know. And we had not been dating each other very long and it was the word about us was not public yet.

[35:04] Ilana Levine: Right.

[35:05] Cynthia Nixon: So I didn't disabuse them. And the only person of these crowd of sweet guys who saw completely what we were was Bill Irwin. And he just spoke to us. He didn't ask any prying questions, but he just spoke to us completely from the get-go like we were a couple because he understood that's what we were. And it was just like the sweetest, most sensitive thing. And if the coronavirus ever ends and I get to film this wonderful TV show that I'm supposed to do, The Gilded Age with Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin gets to be my love interest, which in an episode, which I'm so, you know, be over, you know, beyond excited about.

[35:42] Ilana Levine: Wow.

[35:43] Cynthia Nixon: So, yeah, I'll keep that story.

[35:46] Ilana Levine: That's a yes.

[35:47] Cynthia Nixon: All right. I got one more story. I got it.

[35:50] Ilana Levine: All right.

[35:51] Cynthia Nixon: OK. Yes. So I'm going to keep it in the episode. So I, you know, I didn't thank Christine in my Tony speech, which I think is, you know, OK. I thanked her the next time that I won. Lisa Krohn, who's a friend, was nominated opposite me. And she said she said, of course, she would have liked to win. But she said watching Cynthia Nixon reach over and kiss her big butch girlfriend was just almost as good as winning for her on the on live national television.

[36:28] Ilana Levine: Yeah.

[36:29] Cynthia Nixon: But the thing that I want to say is I was I was really I thought I would win. And like all the OTB people were betting on me and I was betting on me, too. And I was so excited. It was the first time I would have been nominated. I knew I wouldn't win, but I thought it was literally the high point of my life, just being nominated for the Tony and going to the Tonys. But this it was like, I think I'm really going to win this thing. So I arrived at the at the red carpet and I just talked to every single reporter, anybody who wanted to talk to me. And somebody asked me, what is your plan for tonight? And I said, win or lose, I am going to go to that party and I am going to shut down the place. They're going to have to tear me out of there. I am just going to go and drink up every last drop of this evening. And so that is, in fact, what I did.

[37:31] And I hung out with my cast and all different casts that were there. It was so fun. And literally, I went to the bathroom and literally they were starting to put chairs up on tables. And there was a guy who worked there, like a busboy. And he said to me, hey, I saw you. I saw what you said on the red carpet. You did it. It's the end. You can go home now.

[38:05] Cynthia Nixon: So you grow up loving the Tonys and watching the Tonys and then you're nominated and then you get to be at the Tonys and then you win the Tony. And so what does that mean? Um, I don't know. It's just a thing they can never take away from you. You know, it's a thing they can never, never take away from you. Whatever happens after, you know, you have that, you have that moment and you have that performance. And, um, I don't know. It's, it's, it's sort of once you have it, of course, it seems different than before you get it when you think about all the people. But still, it's, it's really nice to have.

[38:51] Ilana Levine: All right. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Are you ready?

[38:54] Cynthia Nixon: Yes, I'm going to try to be ready.

[38:57] Ilana Levine: Okay. Who came that night with you to the Tony Awards?

[39:01] Cynthia Nixon: Uh, Christine, my now wife, who was then my girlfriend.

[39:06] Ilana Levine: What did you wear?

[39:08] Cynthia Nixon: Um, I wore a beautiful white dress. Jay Mendel designed this amazing, beautiful white dress.

[39:13] Ilana Levine: And, uh, in your case, I have to say it in plural fashion. Where do you keep your Tonys?

[39:26] Cynthia Nixon: I keep them on my piano, um, which is a really boring place to keep them. But, um, it does mean I get to wave to them many times as I pass by them each day. Um, but, you know, here's a funny thing. So I have two Tonys. I have the first one that I won for Best Actress. And then the second one I won many years later for Best Featured Actress.

[39:48] Ilana Levine: In The Little Foxes.

[39:49] Cynthia Nixon: In The Little Foxes. And they changed the design of the Tonys. So my Best Featured Actress is quite large. And my Best Actress, which is a higher award, whatever, is quite small.

[40:02] Ilana Levine: Interesting.

[40:04] Cynthia Nixon: It's really weird.

[40:05] Ilana Levine: Interesting.

[40:06] Cynthia Nixon: The opposite of what you think it would be.

[40:08] Ilana Levine: Cynthia Nixon, thank you for being on the show today.

[40:12] Cynthia Nixon: I am so thrilled to have this time with you and to get to share you with others. And I love you very much.

[40:19] Ilana Levine: I love you too, Ilana. Thank you.

[40:22] Cynthia Nixon: My pleasure.

[40:26] Ilana Levine: And The Tony Goes To is produced by Alan Seales for the Broadway Podcast Network. The music and lyrics for the theme song were written by Georgia Femusa. Theme song orchestration by Alexander Sage-Oyen. Episodes are edited by Derek Gunther. Thank you to Parody Bill for the graphics. And please don't forget to go to the iTunes show page and rate and review the show. Thanks for listening. Excerpt from the Tony Awards used with permission of Tony Awards Productions.