Granted, Fran Drescher before this month was mostly remember for his TV show The Nanny. The 1990s shows was so much of a sitcom it could easily pass as a parody of 1990s sitcoms. Drescher plays Fran Fine, a very Jewish woman from Queens selling cosmetics door-to-door after being dumped by her boyfriend. She attracts the eye of a British Broadway producer who eventually hires her to be the nanny for his three kids. I think eventually they got married. I never watched the show.
Drescher co-created the series with her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobsen and it ran for six seasons and she got nominations for Emmys and Golden Globes for her performance. By the time 1993 rolled around, Drescher was in her mid-30s but she had been struggling throughout the 1980s as a character actress appearing in everything from the critically acclaimed Ragtime, directed by Milos Forman, to the comedy classic This is Spinal Tap to the cult comedy classic UHF alongside Weird Al Yankovic. Not bad for an actress who dropped out of college because she couldn’t get into the theater classes.
Her first role ever was sharing the screen with John Travolta in the blockbuster Saturday Night Fever and then alongside Linda Blair in the TV movie Stranger in our House (of Summer of Fear as it’s also known). She had the last laugh. Who needed to spend time at Queens College? Her next role was bigger alongside a young Jay Leno in American Hot Wax and then she appeared in the ensemble The Hollywood Knights which was a cross between American Graffiti nostalgia and National Lampoon’s Animal House raunchiness. Her co-stars were Tony Danza, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Wuhl, who plays her love interest.
But Hollywood isn’t always a fantasy world. Trigger warning for victims of sexual assault. In January of 1985, she was the victim of a home invasion and sexual assault. Two men broke into her L.A. apartment and tied her and a friend up. While one of the men ransacked the house looking for stuff to take Drescher and a friend were raped at gunpoint. Jacobsen had been physically assaulted and forced to watch helplessly because he was tied up too.
While some people would’ve left the city, she stayed and made sure the rapist was brought to justice. The rapist was on parole and reportedly was sentenced to two life sentences. Drescher went on to appear on TV shows like Who’s the Boss, Alf and Night Court where she famously played a woman who suffers from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder.) The character of Miriam Brody comes off as a prude of a woman but then appears to be a sexpot vixen, and attracts the attention of prosecutor Dan Fielding (John Larroquette) who viewed women as a sex objects. In a nice fuck you to the men out there who are the same, the episode ends with Miriam tying up when he tries to have sex with her only for Dan to suffer the embarrassment of being discovered by his colleagues.
During run of The Nanny, Drescher and Jacobson would separate as he revealed that he was a closeted homosexual. Drescher and Jacobson had been high school sweethearts and despite their hardships, they had a hit TV show. They continued to be friendly and business partners. “We choose to be in each other’s lives in any capacity,” she once said. “Our love is unique, rare, and unconditional; unless he’s being annoying.” Drescher would go on to push for equal rights for the LGBTQIA community. She is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church Monastery so she could officiate wedding ceremonies for those in the community.
But as The Nanny was coming to an end, Drescher’s health was at risk as she had been ill for two years and misdiagnosed. In the summer of 2000, she was admitted to Cedars Sinai Hospital with uterine cancer. She had to undergo emergency surgery that resulted in a hysterectomy. After she was declared cancer-free, she became an outspoken advocate for helping other women in early detection.
This advocacy led to the passage of H.R. 1245, the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act, aka Johanna’s Law. Sens. Arlen Spector and Tom Harkin introduced the bill with junior Sen. Barack Obama co-sponsoring it as it passed unanimously both in the House of Representatives and the Senate before being signed into law in January of 2007 by President George W. Bush. He would later appoint her to be Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women’s Health Issues to raise awareness all over the country on women’s health issues.
And in 2021, she ran as president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Even though she is registered as a Democrat, she is very anti-capitalist and has noted she’s glad the Green Party is getting more attention. Running on a campaign theme of “Unite for Strength,” she defeated fellow actor Matthew Modine for the position.
Over the last few weeks as the SAG-AFTRA couldn’t reach an agreement with Hollywood studios, she has become the face of the labor movement and has reminded people don’t confuse Fran Drescher with Fran Fine. She has compared what’s happening to actors and writers to what is happening to the rest of workers in America. She said the result is “when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.” For someone who’s managed to reach across political aisle to get things done, she may just surprise a lot of us with what she can accomplish.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 