Cynthia Nixon Looks Back on "Ratched"

[JamesG]

Cynthia Nixon made her debut in the Ryan Murphy-verse as Gwendolyn Briggs, press secretary to the governor and closeted lover of Nurse Ratched (Sarah Paulson).

The offer for the role came only a couple months after Nixon had lost her bid for governor of New York and provided a much-needed lifeline.



"It was particularly meaningful to me because it was like, 'How is my running for governor and taking a year off of my career going to impact me? What is there going to be waiting for me when I get back?'" she recalls.

"And the part that he thought of me for was a person in the political world; it was such a lifeline to be offered. Any job would've been great at that point, but to be offered such a big, beautiful job was really incredible. I will always be so grateful to him, and so in his debt for being that first person who reached out with not just a single rose but a bouquet of roses."





Originally, Nixon had intended to do a follow-up to Warm Springs, centered on Eleanor Roosevelt's torrid affair with journalist Lorena Hickok. That project never came to fruition, but Nixon injected much of her research about Hickok into Gwendolyn.

"So much of what I had learned about Lorena Hickok, I just co-opted for Gwendolyn because but there was so much of being a woman in hard politics and journalism and being the only woman in that world in your group — it seemed very, very next door to each other."

The role also held particular significance for Nixon as she and the show's star, Sarah Paulson, had been friends for several years prior. She adds, "Having two queer women playing these two queer characters was fantastic."

https://ew.com/role-call-cynthia-nix...-roles-8661174