Cynthia Nixon
"I'm a pretty hands-on mom. But also, my kids have four parents!"
by Tammy La Gorce
April 1, 2009
It's tempting to think of Cynthia Nixon, forty-two, as the real-life Miranda Hobbes — a high-strung stress bomb prepared to dropkick anybody in her path. But that's just because she's such an awesomely convincing actress. Offscreen, Nixon is way more thoughtful than her Sex & the City character. Also more gracious. If the two have anything in common, in fact, it's only an unmistakable intelligence and the tendency to shoot straight. The star of the Broadway play Distracted, running through May 16th, talked with Babble recently about what she's learned about ADD by playing the role of Mama, the harried mother who suspects her nine-year-old son may have the condition, and why now more than ever she's teaching her own kids the importance of getting behind the causes that speak to her. — Tammy La Gorce
Congratulations on the play! How is it going?
It's going great! I have to say audiences have been very enthused. Certainly there's are a lot of laughs to be had, but it also affects people. Everybody I talk to afterward, especially parents who are dealing with these issues of autism or OCD or ADD — it really hits home for them in terms of the endless maze of a journey they have to go through trying to figure out the right thing to do for their kids.
Is it practically an all-parent audience? I picture hordes of thirty-somethings chortling knowingly through the whole thing.
I think that certainly there are people who hear about the play and come to it specifically for that reason. But other people come not knowing what it's really about and it ends up going beyond that for them.
Has it brought the condition into sharp focus for you?
"Does anyone not have ADD?"
I understand it more on a sliding scale. What I've learned is the things that happen to a mother dealing with a son who's told he might have it, and the exploratory measures she has to go through. The worry. And the process of figuring out that if he does have it, what to do about it. On her journey she starts to see it everywhere — in her husband, her neighbor, the doctor she's going to for treatment. Because of this the play spirals into a sort of farcical mania. It eventually gets to the point of sort of asking, in this incredibly fast-paced world, with all the multi-tasking, does anyone not have ADD? It makes me notice the lower end of the spectrum of ADD — the touches of ADD we all have.
What about your own kids, Samantha (twelve) and Charlie (six)? No ADD? Any other issues that would confound a smart, well-informed mother?
No, none other than what's associated with a normal child. They do have normal child issues.
A tween and a first-grader: that's a lot to juggle. Are you a very hands-on mom? Do you rely on a lot of help?
I think I'm a pretty hands-on mom. But also, my kids have four parents, including my girlfriend, who's been a stay-at-home mom for the last year and a half. We don't have a lot of people we hire, but we do have the four of us (including Nixon's ex-husband, Danny Mozes, and his partner). The more parents the better, you know.
©2009 Tammy La Gorce and Babble
About the Author
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Tammy La Gorce is a freelance entertainment writer living in New Jersey with her son and daughter. Her work regularly appears in The New York Times, GRAMMY and other magazines. |
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