(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Cynthia Nixon says her new movie showed her how close America came to "the precipice" during the global economic crisis.

HBO film Too Big to Fail is adapted from the book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, and takes viewers inside the 2008 financial meltdown which spread around the world. Cynthia plays PR executive Michele Davis who works for treasury secretary Hank Paulson and admits the part was challenging. Although she keeps abreast of political matters at times she found the script confusing, and later worried as she began to see just how bad things were in the country at that time.

"I'm so not a financial person. I had to reread the script four times before even accepting the job. I just couldn't follow it," she explained to New York Magazine.

"I feel like when all that was going on, it was really scary, but I had a limited understanding of it. And reading the script and making the film and watching the film all put together helps me understand a lot better what it is that really happened, and how close we came to the precipice, which I don't think I truly understood at the time."

To prepare for the role Cynthia read interviews with Michele, watched her on screen and also met with her. That background work was invaluable as she really got a feel for what the woman went through. Throughout much of the financial crisis Michele was the only woman in meetings, with she found difficult.

"She said the note that she most often sounded was, We can't just fire off a memo, we can't just dictate we have to bring them along. We have to keep them informed so we don't just shock them we have to in a more female way, perhaps reach some kind of consensus. We can't just shoot orders,'" Cynthia explained. (C) Cover Media