She may have scooped Cynthia Nixon's first TV interview in her bid to become New York's Governor, but daytime doyenne Wendy Williams wasn't about to change the format of her eponymous chat show.
After her customary, "How you doin'?" it was was straight into a "hot topics" featuring Tiger Woods' travails and an attempted burglary at Viola Davis' home.
When Nixon did appear, the would-be Governor of New York submitted her feet to the judgmental gaze, as every guest does, of Williams' "shoe-cam," revealing a pair of snakeskin-patterned slingbacks designed by Paul Andrew.
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The talk—and it was softball in the extreme—initially was of fashion and Sex and The City, not policy. There was no discussion of Christine Quinn's summation of Nixon as an "unqualified lesbian."
Williams noted Nixon wasn't red-haired like Miranda Hobbes, Nixon's famous character from the show.
"I'm blonde, with a little help nowadays," said Nixon.
The ghost of Miranda is a complex one for Nixon right now. She is both a boon in terms of public recognition, and also a hobbling specter of celebrity and fictional privilege from whom Nixon is trying to free herself. Nixon the Democratic candidate wants to talk school funding and damn her rival Andrew Cuomo, not chit-chat about Manolos and favorite storylines.
She was not, Nixon insisted, a "designer-y type." In everyday life she didn't look as polished as she did on Williams' couch, she added. Both she and Miranda were hard workers, "total career people, but she's more dressed up and upscale than me."
Nixon confessed she was "a little devastated" by the Sex and The City 2 storyline that saw Big build Carrie her own huge closet.
"The show was so much about female empowerment and women making their own choices and women standing up for what they wanted and support themselves.
"To have this as the climax of film—your wealthy husband builds you really nice closet for your clothes—I thought, 'That's not what you like about the show,' and that's not what we're making it for."
Applause was distinctly lacking for this mini-critique: Sex and The City was about a lot of things, and the clothes and fetishization of wealth was two very key components.
"I'm not saying we don't like clothes," Nixon added a little desperately, possibly remembering one reason why fans loved the show.
Sidenote: Nixon doesn't realize that most Sex and The City fans were also "devastated" by Sex and The City 2, and it had nothing to do with that huge closet, but how terrible the film was.
Later, Williams noted all Nixon's SATC co-stars were supporting her gubernatorial bid, and that was that. There was no more dish on Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall's beef—which, for Williams' salaciously gossipy self, was an odd omission. Had questions and topics been pre-approved or screened in advance?
Nixon was "one small Oscar" away from an EGOT (meaning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), Williams noted, who then got down to politics.
"I love New York," Nixon said to loud applause as to why she was running against two-time incumbent Andrew Cuomo.
She believed in the state as a "progressive bastion," she added. "The election of Donald Trump was a real wake-up call for women in this country. If we don't like the direction the government is going in, we have to step up and get involved like never before."
"I've never lived anywhere else, I wouldn't want to live anywhere other than New York," Nixon said.
She also got into needling her opponent.
"People talk a lot to me about being a celebrity entering this race. I have to say when Andrew Cuomo entered the race eight years ago he was a celebrity because he was the son of [former Governor] Mario Cuomo."
The audience "ooo'd" in shock.
Williams said, "Touché."
Nixon may need to work on her bitchy wisecracks.
She said she was running "as a New Yorker, running as a public school parent, running as a New York subway rider… that's enough to make anybody want to run for Governor nowadays."
That was whooped almost as loudly as her declaration that "I am absolutely for the legalization of marijuana. Let's capture some of that revenue."
Nixon was keen to underscore her political props, saying she had been a campaigner for public schools for the last 17 years, and had been to Albany to discuss issues with legislators.
The definition of insanity, Nixon said, was "doing something over and over and expecting a different result. If you want it done you have to get in there and do it yourself."
The March for Our Lives, showed what could happen "when real people get involved when their lives are impacted," Nixon added.
While New York had "good gun laws," more could have been done under the aegis of the state budget that had just passed, she said—for example, while "bump stocks” are illegal to use in New York, they are legal to possess, sell and transport.
"There's such an appetite for real, progressive change in New York State," Nixon said, but "all the glory" in terms of radical policy-making was being stolen by California, Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota.
"There's so much we can do to be an alternative to Donald Trump, not just rhetorically but with policy to protect our people and say 'That's not the way our country should be going.'"
Of the police killing of the unarmed Stephon Clark in Sacramento, and other similar cases, Nixon said: "I think it is a black man thing… Too often our elected leaders talk about killings when a lot of children are shot in school, but when young black men of color are shot by police, unarmed… If we say 'Black Lives Matter,' we have to mean it and implement things."
Williams then asked Nixon to address one of her show's key demographics. "How can black women help you become Governor?"
"Black women are the cornerstone and backbone of the Democratic Party, and we need to let then lead," said Nixon to more applause.
Nixon said Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the African-American Senate Democrat leader in Albany (whom she did not name on air), had been excluded from budget negotiations, leaving "four men in the room" to work on sexual harassment policy, one of whom—said Nixon—had been accused of sexual misconduct himself.
That Stewart-Cousins was excluded was "not OK," said Nixon.
Ninety percent of black women had voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Williams said. "Our vote is important."
"But black women are going to stop showing up for the Democratic Party if the Democratic Party doesn't start showing up for them," said Nixon. "It can't just be that we remember the importance of black women on election day and forget them for the rest of the time."
Williams said she would hold Nixon to her words. She also pleaded that Nixon sort out the tolls and "fix the tunnels" linking New York City to New Jersey.
Nixon ended by saying that the media intrusion into the lives of her, her wife Christine Marinoni and their three children was "a small sacrifice and consideration when you think what we can do in New York to lead this country back in the right direction."
And with that, the ghost of Miranda Hobbes took another small step back into the shadows.
