Who would have thought the nasally-voiced nanny from Jamaica, Queens would someday be president? Fran Drescher did! Emmy nominated for bringing Fran Fine to TV screens in the hit 90s sitcom The Nanny, Fran Drescher is a cancer survivor, author, producer, actress in various movies and TV shows, community advocate and current President of the Screen Actors Guild. And long before a generation of celebrities turned themselves into a brand, Drescher built a career on and perfected the art of being herself.
Fran Drescher early movies and TV shows
Francine Joy “Fran” Drescher attended Hillcrest High School in New York (alongside fellow sitcom star Ray Romano) and Queens College, but dropped out the first year because all the acting classes were filled. Fran then enrolled in cosmetology school, but her continued dream was to be an actress.
She got her first break in a small role as dancer Connie in 1977’s megahit, Saturday Night Fever, where she shared the disco floor with John Travolta. American Hot Wax and Summer of Fear – both 1978 films – followed. Drescher was told to lose her nasally voice and New York accent, but when she did, the work didn’t come. As a matter of fact, what she would come to learn was that people wanted to hire her when she spoke with her natural voice — the voice that has since made her famous.
The 1980s found Drescher busy as a character actress, with roles in films such as Gorp (1980), Doctor Detroit (1983), UHF (1989), Cadillac Man (1990) and memorably, This is Spinal Tap (1984). Guest appearance on TV also kept Drescher relevant, showing up in Who’s The Boss?, Night Court and ALF.
The Nanny makes Drescher an icon
When The Nanny first hit the airwaves in 1993, it was an instant hit and continued to draw large audiences until it went off the air in 1999. It ultimately made Fran Drescher a star and fashion influencer, yet she credits being in the right place at the right time as the key to her success.
It was on a plane trip to Paris with ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson that she bumped into then president of CBS, Jeff Sagansky. She convinced him to hear her idea for a sitcom and within a year, the pilot was filmed. She told Marie Claire, “I had run into the bathroom to put some makeup on and came out to start talking to him basically saying, ‘Have I got a show for you! And me!'” Sagansky later said that he was impressed with Drescher’s intelligence, persistence and charm.
Fran Drescher movies and TV shows after The Nanny
Her work outside of The Nanny included 1996’s Jack, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Picking Up the Pieces, co-starring Woody Allen. Her return to television in the early 2000s was not quite as successful. Living With Fran in 2005 only lasted two seasons and a sitcom, The New Thirty, also starring Rosie O’Donnell, never got off the pages.
A three-week test run of her own daytime talk show, The Fran Drescher Tawk Show, got shelved while Happily Divorced on TVland lasted two years. Drescher played Fran Lovett, a florist coping with the realization that her husband (played by Joh Michael Higgins) is gay, while in real life, Fran’s co-creator and former husband Jacobson had also come out as gay.
Fran Drescher didn’t limit her talent to just movies and TV shows. She enjoyed the stage as well, making her Broadway debut in 2014 in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella as the evil stepmother. Off-Broadway saw Drescher in Love, Loss and What I Wore and Camelot at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic.
Staying strong in the midst of tragedy
While all this sounds like a charmed life, Drescher has endured many hardships. In 1985, two armed robbers broke into her Los Angeles apartment and assaulted her and her female friend. She didn’t tell her story until she went on The Larry King Show many years later. Although it was a traumatic experience that took years of therapy to recover from, Drescher found ways to work through her pain.
In 2000, Drescher also underwent a radical hysterectomy to treat her uterine cancer — this after experiencing symptoms for two years and being misdiagnosed by eight doctors. Today, she is declared cancer-free. In her book Cancer Schmancer, she writes: “My whole life has been about changing negatives into positives.”
“I was going to learn what I needed to learn, ask questions, become partners with my doctor instead of having some kind of parent/child relationship.” Outside her Hollywood work, she continues to raise awareness of early warning signs of cancer with the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a non-profit organization. “It’s been an amazing journey,” she told PEOPLE of her health. “I have learned tremendous life lessons and experienced incredible silver linings as a result of this experience.”
