How Cynthia Nixon came out

If she had it to do over, Cynthia Nixon would have “come out” differently, said Matthew Breen in The Advocate. The Sex and the City star had been exclusively heterosexual until she became involved with current partner Christine Marinoni in 2004, and decided to keep the relationship a secret for months on the advice of her publicist. “He was a nice man who had a number of clients who were closeted,” Nixon says. “He just kept saying, ‘It’s your life, and it’s private, and that’s it.’ And we kept asking, ‘That’s the whole thing? We never move past that? We’re at the playground with the kids, and pictures are taken of us, and we say, “No, she’s my friend”?’”

Rumors quickly circulated that Nixon had left her longtime boyfriend for a woman. “There was a mad scramble to find out who she was. There were people stationed outside my house.” Nixon fired her publicist, and hired a new, openly gay one who suggested she come clean. “I was like, ‘Really? We can just confirm?’” Nixon says. “So that’s what we did, and it was fantastic.” In the end, she doesn’t understand what the fuss was all about; a relationship, she says, is a relationship. “I had never met a woman I was attracted to before Christine. She’s basically a short man with boobs.”

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