Courtesy of Max

Miranda Hobbes is in a place we’ve never seen her before — living as a single queer woman dating in New York.

As played by Cynthia Nixon, Miranda began the “Sex and the City” reboot series “And Just Like That” with her sexual awakening, diving into a relationship with nonbinary comedian Che Díaz (Sara Ramírez). Their Season 2 breakup forced Miranda into the dating pool (with which she was somewhat familiar) among fellow queer women (with which she was not).

In the new season’s fourth episode, Miranda tapes an appearance on the BBC that goes catastrophically wrong — at least as far as the perfectionist Miranda is concerned — when she slips and uses a crass anatomical term when trying to say the word “country.” BBC producer Joy (Dolly Wells) sees the humor in the moment, and draws closer to Miranda as she cheers her up. The dynamic isn’t unlike the one Miranda shared with ex-husband Steve (David Eigenberg), except Miranda, now, is fully herself. Nixon spoke to Variety about Miranda’s dating journey and her journey so far in the series — including why the lighter plotline Miranda’s living out this season feels like “a breather.”

Miranda seems definitively post-Che as she takes forays into the dating scene — we haven’t seen her single as a queer woman. What did it feel like to play?

It’s a wonderful throwback — but dating a different gender of person. When Miranda was dating back in the day, it often didn’t go well, but at least she was not out of practice. Now, she’s super out of practice. She’s dating an entirely different kind of person. And it’s a brave new world of sexual politics; on dating apps, everything is different. So it felt really fun. Miranda is so focused on her competence, so it’s always fun to plop her into a situation in which she is fairly incompetent.

Can you talk a bit about what it was like to share scenes with Dolly Wells?

Dolly is so delightful. It’s so fun to be acting with someone who is not just an actor but a writer and a director, and an inherently accomplished and serious person who also just has an overlay of cheekiness and funness and irreverence. She’s such a good match for Miranda, and her jolly, snarky British humor to Miranda’s… well, you know, Miranda’s kind of didactic.

The scene that really calls this to mind for me is the one after Miranda makes a blunder on live TV — and she feels as if the world is ending, and Dolly’s character Joy is able to gently deflate that.

It’s so great, right? She de-catastrophizes where Miranda catastrophizes. It’s not like Joy is the Buddha. She is a person with her own foibles and insecurities, and we get to see that she’s not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. But she is wonderful in a very different way than Steve. Steve was a wonderful antidote to Miranda, and Joy is a wonderful antidote in a very different way.

There are currently three single women on the show.

You’re including Carrie as a single woman?

I am. Is that controversial?

No… I don’t know!

She’s single-adjacent, let’s say. But between Carrie, Seema, and Miranda, do you think that Miranda being in same-sex relationships adds a different dimension?

Yes and no. What’s wonderful is — when Miranda tries to date the guacamole girl [a Mexican restaurant server in this season’s second episode], and she just totally turns out to be straight. I suppose a straight person could try to date an opposite-gender person and find out they’re gay, but that happens less. So I guess if I had to pick one, I would just say, it’s just more disastrous dating stories.

Did you as a credited executive producer add elements of your own experience as a queer woman?

The writers may choose to add elements of all of our experiences. Michael Patrick King obviously knows us very well, as do the other writers, particularly Elisa Zuritsky and Julie Rottenberg, who were there on the original show.

Not that intense, painful things can’t be rewarding to play, but Miranda really went through the wringer in the first season. It must be a relief to play a dating story.

She really did — it was a lot of intensity. So it was fun to take a breather. Our show, whether it’s the old show or the current show, is most quintessentially itself when people are having terrible dating experiences.