Ada Brook

Ada Brook lives under her formidable sister Agnes's roof in old New York, the gentler of the two spinster aunts taking in their orphaned niece Marian. She is soft-spoken, sentimental, easily flustered by her sister's sharper tongue, and quietly kind—the household's warmth where Agnes supplies its steel.

Cynthia Nixon plays meekness as its own kind of texture rather than mere contrast to Christine Baranski's imperiousness—Ada's little sighs and half-finished sentences carry real feeling. The writing could easily leave her as comic relief; Nixon keeps finding the person underneath, someone whose gentleness has cost her something over the years.