Lynn Cohen, ‘Sex and the City’ Actress, Dead at 86

Lynn Cohen, the actress best known for playing Magda on Sex and the City, died on Friday, according a statement provided to The Wrap by her representative. She was 86.

In addition to Sex and the City, she was also known for her TV roles in Law & Order, Nurse Jackie, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Damages and Master of None, among others. Her film credits include The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Across the Universe, Deconstructing Harry, Munich, and Synecdoche, New York. She also appeared in both Sex and the City movies as Magda, the housekeeper and nanny for Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon).

No cause of death was provided in The Wrap’s report.

Cohen was very proud of the HBO series and her role in it, as she told Cosmopolitan in 2018.

“It showed a woman of a different age who was smart as the devil, very bossy, and also understood sexuality, and they needed that,” Cohen said. “It enlarged the canvas on which they were working, that they would not have a typical old lady molding away in some retirement home somewhere, but a woman who worked, and didn’t suffer fools.”

She later added, “The influence of the whole series was enormous. If you went to a bar, you saw people dressed like that. I’ve been all over this country, and women who were in their 90s would come up and say, “All my life we never mentioned the word sex, and now I would never ever miss one episode of the reruns.” And they see them again and again. It still happens, because it changed the image of women in a very positive way. Their intelligence and their bonding with each other, not just at each other’s throats.

“I was in Italy recently and I was in a glass factory looking around, and all of a sudden I hear from way across the room [does Italian accent], ‘Magda! It’s Magda!’ Every country I’ve been in. I still can’t go anywhere without having somebody hug me.”

Following the news of Cohen’s death, Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker praised her “talent, grace, (and) inspiration” in an Instagram tribute. No other co-stars have weighed in as of this writing.

No other details on Cohen’s death have been made available as of press time.

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