Cynthia Nixon declared that she is “absolutely for” legalizing marijuana in New York during her first televised sit-down interview on The Wendy Williams Show on Wednesday.
The Sex and the City star said that the gun laws could be tougher and that she supports making marijuana legal in New York.
“There’s such an appetite for real progressive change in New York state,” she said. “I’m absolutely for the legalization of marijuana. Let’s capture some of that revenue.”
READ MORE: ‘Sex and the City’ cast break silence on Cynthia Nixon’s New York governor run
Nixon confirmed her run for the New York governor’s seat in March, planning to go up against the current Governor Andrew Cuomo in the December Primary.
“People talk a lot to me about being a celebrity entering this race,” the Emmy award actress told Williams. “I have to say, when Andrew Cuomo ran eight years ago, he was a celebrity because he was the son of Mario Cuomo.”
When the host asked why Nixon wanted to take on politics, she said, “I love New York and I believe so much in New York.”
She added that funding for the city’s public schools would be a top priority for her as governor. “If you want it done you actually have to get in there yourself,” she said.
READ MORE: Cynthia Nixon confirms she’s running for New York governor
Nixon said that the election of U.S. President Donald Trump motivated her to run, calling it “a real wake-up call” for her.
“If we don’t like the direction our government is going in, we have to step up and we have to get involved like never before, so that’ what I’m doing,” she said.
She continued: “I think that we’re at a real watershed moment now.”
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Nixon also told Williams that she believes Stephon Clark was killed because “it is a black man thing.” Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old man, was shot eight times March 18 in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, Calif.
“Too often our elected leaders, they talk about killings when it’s a lot of children in a school,” Nixon told Williams. “But when it’s young black men of color who are being shot by the police unarmed … if we’re going to say black lives matter, we have to mean it and we have to implement change.”
READ MORE: Unarmed man Stephon Clark shot 8 times by police from behind or the side, autopsy finds
Later that same day, Nixon told reporters in upstate Hoosick Falls that legalizing marijuana is a revenue-raiser and a needed criminal justice reform.
She said that black men “are incarcerated at incredibly high rates because of this thing that white people do with impunity and I think we’ve got to end mass incarceration in this state and certainly legalizing marijuana would be a way of starting to staunch that flow.”
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