Cynthia Nixon Controversy Continues: Is This a ‘Wit’-ty Publicity Campaign?

Cynthia Nixon is making headlines again, just days after her controversial New York Times interview invited some serious backlash. The former Sex and the City star appeared on Live! With Kelly Tuesday morning -- shocking audiences with a bald-as-a-cueball look.

Nixon shaved her head to play the cancer-stricken lead role in the Broadway play Wit, which officially opens Wednesday. Indeed, Nixon might be enjoying more media attention this week than when she came out as a lesbian.

Of course, not all of the attention is flattering (but the hair-free look is kind of working for her). Nixon is facing the ire of some members of the LGBT community for comments she made to a Times reporter late last week, insisting that her homosexuality is a choice.

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line 'I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better.' And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice, she told the Times. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me.

I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not, she continued.

It didn't take long for Nixon to draw condemnation from some activists.

What she means is that she's bisexual, wrote John Aravosis of Gay America Blog, and doesn't quite get that most people aren't able to have sexual romantic relationships with both men and women because they're just not into both genders. She is into both genders. And that's fine.

But she needs to learn how to choose her words better, because she just fell into a right-wing trap, willingly, Aravosis continued. When the religious right says it's a choice, they mean you quite literally choose your sexual orientation, you can change it at will, and that's bull.

Nixon did not alienate everyone, however. She found an ally at Salon.com, where Tracy Clark Flory's article When Gay is a Choice argues that Nixon's comments are supported by mounting scientific research.

Nixon will be playing Professor Vivian Bearing in the Broadway debut of Wit -- the Off-Broadway staging won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Nixon won the 2006 Tony Award for her lead role in Rabbit Hole. The same role went to Nicole Kidman in the film adaptation of the same name.