\n<\/p>\n
In the first season of Sex and the City,<\/em><\/a> Cynthia Nixon\u2019s<\/strong> Miranda dates a Catholic guy who insists on taking an immediate post-coital shower to wash away the sins of their carnal relations. By season three, her housekeeper Magda (Lynn Cohen) places a Virgin Mary statuette in the nightstand where her vibrator once rested. But nothing could have prepared her for the premiere episode of And Just Like That\u2026,<\/em><\/a> in which Miranda has sex with a nun\u2014named Mary, naturally.<\/p>\n That sister of the cloth is played by none other than Rosie O\u2019Donnell,<\/strong> a coy in-joke; though she\u2019s one of the most famous lesbians in Hollywood, here she\u2019s playing someone who has never had sex with a woman. \u201cIt felt so, I don\u2019t know, electric, and yet still so natural,\u201d Mary tells Miranda in the afterglow. \u201cI never dreamed that my first time could be both those things.\u201d<\/p>\n Nixon recently told Vanity Fair<\/em> that she personally contacted O\u2019Donnell about the role. \u201cThere had been parts that had been written with her in mind before\u2014none of them had ever worked out,\u201d she says. When O\u2019Donnell signed on, it gave Nixon the rare opportunity to have a fellow queer performer play her onscreen love interest. \u201cIt was like that when Sarah Paulson<\/strong> and I got to act opposite each other in Ratchet<\/em><\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of wonderful female, straight co-stars [as] romantic co-stars\u2014but it was a really special treat for me and Rosie.\u201d<\/p>\n When Miranda meets Mary, she\u2019s at a romantic low point. Still recently divorced, out as a lesbian, and now broken up with the pickup artist formerly known as Che Diaz,<\/a> she struggles to find her place in the dating pool. Between sips of a \u201cPhony Negroni,\u201d Miranda and Mary lock eyes from across a lesbian bar\u2014two of the only \u201crandos\u201d left at closing time, as another far younger patron puts it. But there is a spark between them, which is promptly snuffed out by the whole virgin-nun confession.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, you deflowered the Virgin Mary?\u201d Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker<\/strong>) says upon learning about Miranda\u2019s hookup. It feels like this entire storyline was devised by series boss Michael Patrick King<\/strong><\/a> solely to have Carrie deliver that line. Or maybe this one: Miranda asks if she can \u201cghost a nun.\u201d Carrie gamely replies: \u201cIt would<\/em> be a Holy Ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n The only problem with that plan? Mary, a Canadian visiting New York City for the first time, can\u2019t stop texting Miranda with invitations to ride the carousel in Central Park or venture into the Times Square M&M store. \u201cI don\u2019t know which is worse,\u201d Carrie says, \u201cthat you slept with a nun, or a tourist.\u201d<\/p>\n