Nixon: Making Leap from 'Sex' to 'Women'

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/13/2002 at 01:00 PM EDT

One of the bitchiest campfests ever to be committed to film, 1939's "The Women," based on a 1936 stage play by Claire Boothe Luce, was revived for the Broadway stage earlier this year and is now set to surface on PBS July 21. Among the all-female cast of the stage revival is "Sex in the City" star Cynthia Nixon, who here essays the role of goody-goody Mary Haines, played in the movie by Norma Shearer. "Mary is all about beauty, wealth and always thinking of the other person before herself," Nixon, 36, told the Associated Press. Compared to her "Sex and the City" character, Miranda, Nixon says of Mary: "I think Miranda is the opposite of all those things: She is suspicious of beauty and graciousness, and she feels firmly that everything she's gotten in her life, she's gotten with her own hard work." Also starring in "The Women" are Kristen Johnston ("3rd Rock from the Sun") and Rue McClanahan ("The Golden Girls"). As for how she would compare the characters in this old stage chestnut to the ones inhabiting her HBO hit (which will kick off its new season July 21), Nixon told the AP, "The women in 'The Women' seem ahead of the women in 'Sex and the City' in terms of being married, having children and having wealth. But in terms of knowing themselves, they're completely in the dark." (HBO, like PEOPLE, is part of AOL Time Warner.)