Interview with Cynthia Nixon; Interview with Jennifer Love Hewitt; Interview with Serena Williams
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: Tonight, sex --</s>CYNTHIA NIXON, ACTRESS: There are a lot of myths about gay people.</s>MORGAN: Love.</s>JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT, ACTRESS: I dated great people.</s>MORGAN: And basics (ph). "Sex and the City's" Cynthia Nixon defending gay marriage and taking on Mitt Romney and the right.</s>NIXON: I don't think we've seen an attack on women's health like this in the last 40 years.</s>MORGAN: Also, Jennifer Love Hewitt's racy new role, a sultry suburban mom, on her hit show, the "Client List." Tonight, she talks love, fame, her figure and her scandalous billboards. Plus, anyone for tennis? Serena Williams like you've never seen her before, in the Olympics, her emotions, her men, and heartbreak.</s>SERENA WILLIAMS, PRO TENNIS PLAYER: I think that's tough to be in love, and then it, you know, it might not work out. And that's life.</s>MORGAN: And talking of heartbreak, only in America special, Serena and I hit the court with the Wimbledon champ in for a bit of a nasty surprise. This is PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT.</s>MORGAN: Good evening. Our big story, the race for the White House kicks of probably tomorrow when President Obama's re-election campaign launches in Ohio. It's a crucial battleground state for him and Mitt Romney. Social issues are front and center in the fight. And tonight we have the feisty Cynthia Nixon as she slams Romney on same-sex marriage and abortion. But she also has strong words for the president. That's coming up. Also, some risky business for Jennifer Love Hewitt. The turned as Texas mom in "The Client List," offering more than the odd massage to make ends meet. I'll ask her about that controversial role and the uproar over a certain poster campaign.</s>LOVE HEWITT: Living in L.A. for a really long time, I thought the idea was always to have bigger boobs --</s>MORGAN: Yes!</s>LOVE HEWITT: -- not smaller. It's quite shocking.</s>MORGAN: And then match point with Serena Williams. My candid interview from a spectacular court inside Grand Central Terminal. We talk tennis, temper, and why she claims she'll never date again. Then, it's game on in a match that Serena may want to forget.</s>MORGAN: Cynthia Nixon is best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes on "Sex and the City." But early this week, she received a Tony nomination for her role in Broadway in "Wit." And she joins me now. Cynthia, welcome. Congratulations.</s>NIXON: Thank you so much.</s>MORGAN: It's not like you haven't had a few awards -- two Emmys, two SAGs, a Grammy, now a Tony may be heading your way?</s>NIXON: Well,</s>I -- MORGAN: Give me --</s>NIXON: -- I have one from before, so I'll --</s>MORGAN: Oh, you do?</s>NIXON: -- I'll treasure that. Yes, I have one from before. Yes.</s>MORGAN: Is there anything you haven't won?</s>NIXON: No, no Oscar. No Heisman.</s>MORGAN: It's a great role that you play in "Wit."</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: It's an incredibly powerful role. At one stage, you're completely bold. You play a cancer victim --</s>NIXON: That died.</s>MORGAN: -- who -- who dies. You know, you're naked on stage.</s>NIXON: Yes, I am.</s>MORGAN: It's very raw and visceral, isn't it? And the parallel with your life --</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: -- and your family, in fact, because your -- your mother suffered from cancer three times --</s>NIXON: Three times.</s>MORGAN: -- but is still, thank God, with us.</s>NIXON: She's still with us. She's almost 82.</s>MORGAN: Amazing. You --</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: -- you had this battle with cancer in 2006. Tell me, how much of your battle with it did you bring to the role? Does it actually work like that?</s>NIXON: It can work like that. But I have to say that my -- you know, you call it a battle with cancer. To me, that seems such a big word. I mean, I feel like I -- I had a cancer diagnosis. I had a very small operation. I went through some radiation and then I was on a -- a particular pill for five years. So to me, it's not a battle. To me, it was like a -- a medical bump in the road that is not fun, you know, but you kind of grit your teeth and you get through it.</s>MORGAN: It's scary, though?</s>NIXON: It's scary. It's scary, but having had my mother go through it, you know, at this -- at that point a couple of times previous and I saw how well she dealt with it. No, to me, I didn't -- other than my experience of being in the hospital, I didn't draw on anything. I -- I really, you know, I've had some friends who have died of cancer and I've had some friends who have died of AIDS. And so I called on those things much more. And also, strangely, childbirth.</s>MORGAN: Really?</s>NIXON: Yes, because there is a point later on in the play when my character, Vivian, is in incredible, incredible pain. And my only experience with being in --</s>MORGAN: Was childbirth.</s>NIXON: -- incredible pain was childbirth. So, yes.</s>MORGAN: "The New York Times" described your performance as "large and lucid and delicate." A great phrase, I thought.</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: You must be very proud of the plaudits you're getting and now that the Tony nomination is up.</s>NIXON: Yes. I mean, it's -- it's an -- it's an amazing role to be given. And it's such a -- it's such a big canvas, as an actor, to paint on. And also, you get through -- you know, she has so much time on stage where she's hilariously funny, like bringing down the house kind of laughs. And so even though it takes an enormous amount of energy and focus, the -- you get fed so much by that -- by that audience response. It really -- it energizes you.</s>MORGAN: And talking of energizing things, you've been quite active on the political front. Let's play a little clip from a promotional ad you've done for President Obama.</s>NIXON: 2011, times were tough. Recession. Joblessness. So many of us struggling to make ends meet. But for women, times were about to get a lot tougher.</s>REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: The time has come to deny any and all federal funding to Planned Parenthood of America.</s>REP. DOUG LAMBORN (R), COLORADO: I rise in support of the amendment to remove taxpayer dollars from Planned Parenthood.</s>NIXON: We remember who turned their backs on us, and who voted to keep us healthy. November is just around the corner. Soon, it will be our turn to vote.</s>MORGAN: I mean, the pretty clear message from that was, look, you know, if you're a woman and you're thinking of where to vote in November, you should be voting for President Obama, not the Republicans.</s>NIXON: Absolutely. Certainly not Mitt Romney. Certainly not Mitt Romney.</s>MORGAN: Do you think he's anti-woman, Mitt Romney? With the --</s>NIXON: That's a very strong thing to say. But I think he doesn't have a sense of -- of women's health, and I think particularly women living in poverty, about how difficult it is to have access to not just contraceptive health care, but general health care. And I think that President Obama said recently, it was so -- he said women aren't a special interest group. They're -- they're more than half of the population. And it's not like women are children, you know? Women are half the population and they know how to take care of themselves, if they are only given access to health care. We shouldn't be making these decisions --</s>MORGAN: But will you --</s>NIXON: -- for them, but we should let women make their decisions for themselves.</s>MORGAN: Right. I mean, were you a bit staggered, like many people, by the way the Republican race went in its rhetoric about women's issues?</s>NIXON: Absolutely. I don't think we've seen an attack on women's health like this in the last 40 years. Yes, I mean, I think these people certainly are -- they're -- they're -- we know they're anti-abortion, but they're also anti-contraception. But I think this attack on Planned Parenthood, you know, about 3 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. Ninety-seven percent is women's health. And like right now in Texas, Rick Perry is trying to shut down and stop all federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Well, 40 percent of the women living in poverty in Texas are served by Planned Parenthood. That is their primary doctor. So what you're saying, then, if you cut all this funding, half of the poor women living in Texas have no medical care.</s>MORGAN: Being dispassionate, has Barack Obama done enough for women's health issues? I mean, it's obvious that the Republicans have taken a rather strange look at this. But has he done enough as president?</s>NIXON: You know, there are certain issues on which we can never do enough. But --</s>MORGAN: Where would you like to see him being bold? If he gets reelected, where do you want to see a bit more grit?</s>NIXON: Well, I certainly would like to see a bit more grit in terms of gay issues, in terms of LGBT issues. I would certainly -- he has said repeatedly that he'll repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. And I think that that is something whose time has come. That is overdue.</s>MORGAN: So do you think it would be quite nice to see the president now with eight states legalizing gay marriage, given this clear bandwagon heading that way, it's quite a moment for the president of the United States to stand there and say I support gay marriage. Do you think he's going to do that --</s>NIXON: I don't know if he --</s>MORGAN: -- if he gets reelected?</s>NIXON: -- I don't know if he's going to do that. And that would be, certainly, an amazing thing if he would do that and I would applaud and I think people all over this country would applaud. But I -- the thing that I really want from him is the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which he has said is unconstitutional. And I think that that is something that is very in his -- in his control. And that's for me, that's his task.</s>MORGAN: You are engaged to be married.</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: Now, you were with a man for a long time.</s>NIXON: For 15 years. We have two children together.</s>MORGAN: Two children?</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: And now you're going to be marrying a woman?</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: And that's created a lot of interest and, as you would expect. You said this, which I thought was fascinating: "The fight for gay marriage is often portrayed in political terms, Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative. But for couples like us, this is about something simpler and more personal. I want to be married to my girlfriend. I want us to have a ceremony. I want all our friends and family to come. I want our kids to be there, just like that historic night last month from the subway platform, I want it to be a moment I will always remember, from death us do part." I like that.</s>NIXON: Thank you.</s>MORGAN: It kind of took all the politics and the stigma away from the whole thing and said, you know what, we just want to do what other people do.</s>NIXON: Yes, I mean certainly it is a -- it is a political issue. But when you break down why gay people want to get married to each other, they want to get married for the same reasons that anybody wants to get married. They want to celebrate their love. They want to make a lifelong commitment. They want to gather their friends and family around them and -- and say this is the person I'm going to be with for the rest of my life.</s>MORGAN: How have you found all the scrutiny on your life? Because you've been, I think, quite brave in the stuff that you've said.</s>NIXON: It's not been so bad.</s>MORGAN: You've copped a little bit of flack, but a lot of praise, too. I mean it's one of those things, isn't it, where you -- you put your head over the parapet. Did you expect what was coming your way?</s>NIXON: You know, when -- when news of Christine's and my relationship broke, there was this tremendous, you know, we were on the cover of two New York daily newspapers. She had, you know, British -- her parents, who live on a little island off of Seattle, had British journalists in SUVs on their lawn. I mean, it was -- it was a wild explosion. But there was not really too much to say. And so, it sort of came and went pretty quickly. It -- the flame burned very high and then it pretty much has been a kind of a slow ember since then.</s>MORGAN: When you look at the debate -- and I've had a lot of people in here. We had Kurt Cameron famously came in here and said some pretty outrageous things, I felt, using Christianity as an excuse. How do you wrestle with people who've got religious convictions about it?</s>NIXON: Well, you know, I think that the thing is that gay people, that there are a lot of myths about gay people, that they are -- they're sick, or they're -- they prey on children, or they're harmful to children, or they're causing the destruction of the -- of traditional straight marriage. And I think as people personally and on television and all this reading the newspaper, come to see more and more gay families and gay couples, I think that these myths are disappearing one by one, which is great. And now, we have a whole generation of children -- you know, they say that there are two million children living in the United States who have been raised by gay couples.</s>MORGAN: I -- I had one of the leading, Zack Wahls came in --</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: -- who's an extraordinary young man. And he had both his moms sitting in the audience, which I thought -- I thought was great. And as he said, you know, Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted, I don't know, however many hours it was.</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: And he listed a whole lot of other things in his book, which I thought was a smart point to make --</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: -- that, actually, it's respecting the sanctity of marriage is much more important, I think. Are you as happy as you've ever been in your life?</s>NIXON: I am definitely as happy as I've ever been. Happier, I would say, than I've ever been. So, yes.</s>MORGAN: Life is pretty good for you, isn't it</s>NIXON: Life is pretty good.</s>MORGAN: I can't let you go without a quick mention of "Sex and the City." Let's take a little watch of you in action. This is great, this bit.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So this is a big apartment to buy for just you.</s>NIXON: I have a lot of shoes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh. Maybe the boyfriend will move in?</s>NIXON: No, no boyfriend. Just me.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a son who owns his own business.</s>NIXON: No thanks. I'll take it.</s>MORGAN: I loved that character.</s>NIXON: Yes. She's great.</s>MORGAN: Have you seen "Girls," this new --</s>NIXON: I haven't, but I -- I am -- I want to very much. It sounds amazing.</s>MORGAN: Everyone says it's the new "Sex and the City."</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: I've read that a few times.</s>NIXON: Yes.</s>MORGAN: But it's getting a bit of traction.</s>NIXON: It sounds amazing.</s>MORGAN: What do you think "Sex and the City" gave American women? What -- what would you like its legacy to be to American women, do you think?</s>NIXON: I think that "Sex and the City" showed that it was OK to be single, even if you were in your 30s, even if you were in your 40s, even if you were going to be single for the rest of your life. But that didn't mean you were sitting at home pining by the phone, hoping that somebody would call; that you could have a rich, full life. You could have a rich, full sex life. You could have fun and adventures and work and great friends. And just because you didn't have a ring on your finger didn't mean that your -- that you weren't happy.</s>MORGAN: And you are living proof that it can all -- it can all come crashing to glorious utopia.</s>NIXON: Yes. Yes.</s>MORGAN: Star of Broadway, blissfully happy in your life. The Tony Awards are on June the 10th, 2012. It's been a real pleasure, Cynthia.</s>NIXON: Thank you.</s>MORGAN: Best of luck with it.</s>NIXON: A pleasure for me, too.</s>MORGAN: I hope you win.</s>NIXON: Thank you.</s>MORGAN: Good luck.</s>NIXON: Thanks.</s>MORGAN: Coming up, my interview with the woman who's heating up "The Client List", Jennifer Love Hewitt.