Emmy-nominated for bringing Fran Fine to TV screens, Fran Drescher is also a cancer survivor and community advocate
Fran Drescher is an actor, writer, producer and author who audiences may recognize for her iconic laugh — and fashion — throughout the TV sitcom The Nanny.
What many may not know about Drescher, 65, is that outside of her work in Hollywood she’s a cancer survivor who launched a research and advocacy non-profit. “It’s been an amazing journey,” she told PEOPLE of her health in 2021. “I have learned tremendous life lessons and experienced incredible silver linings as a result of this experience.”
Now, the Emmy nominee is the president of SAG-AFTRA, leading a trade union of 160,000 screen actors and other performers. How did she become the figurehead of a guild membership that just announced an industry-wide strike? Read on to learn more about Fran Drescher and her life on- and off-screen.
How The Nanny launched her career
Drescher was born in New York City’s Queens to parents Morty, a naval systems analyst, and Sylvia, a bridal consultant. While studying at Hillcrest High School, she met her future husband and collaborator Peter Marc Jacobson; they married in 1978 just three years after graduating high school.
The pair would go on to executive produce and write The Nanny, featuring Drescher as Jewish fashionista Fran Fine, who becomes a nanny to a rich British family. The comedy, which aired on CBS from 1993 to 1999, earned the actress two Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. Brenda Cooper’s costumes earned a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in 1995.
Fun fact: a crossover episode of The Nanny featured Drescher’s Hillcrest High classmate Ray Romano, who appeared on the show as his character Ray Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond.
As an actress, Drescher got her start in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever opposite John Travolta. Other big screen appearances included 1980’s Gorp, 1984’s Spinal Tap, 1989’s The Big Picture and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1996 film Jack. TV audiences caught her in guest roles in Who’s the Boss? and Night Court. Although she lives in L.A., Drescher has also worked in NYC theater, including a Broadway debut as the stepmother in 2014’s revival of Cinderella.
She was married for 21 years
Of husband Peter Marc Jacobson, Drescher told InTouch in 2010 that when they first got together, “We were just kids and didn’t know who we truly were. We went through a lot together.”
Drescher and Jacobson ended their marriage in 1999 — but their friendship and creative partnership continued. On The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2014, the couple discussed Jacobson’s journey to coming out as gay and how it affected their relationship.
After leading the WB sitcom Living with Fran, Drescher repeated The Nanny’s formula for success by teaming up with Jacobson on Happily Divorced. The sitcom, which aired on TV Land from 2011 to 2013, featured the actress as Fran Lovett, a florist coping with the realization her husband (played by John Michael Higgins) is gay.
A fierce advocate for the LGBTQ community, Drescher officiated the weddings of real-life gay couples as part of a marriage contest that Happily Divorced promoted in 2012.
She is a cancer survivor
Drescher is the author of two memoirs, 1996’s Enter Whining and 2002’s Cancer Schmancer, the latter covering her experience with uterine cancer. The disease was diagnosed properly, she has said, in 2000 after about two years of painful symptoms and eight doctors attempting to treat her.
“One of the most significant things that I learned is that my story was not unique, which was very mind-blowing to me,” she told HealthyWomen in 2020. “I wrote the book so that others wouldn’t go through what I did. I very quickly realized that my experience is really quite common and happens often. It became clear that the book was not the end, but just the beginning of what became a life’s mission.”
Cancer Schmancer is also the name of the non-profit organization that Drescher launched in the wake of her misdiagnosis and treatment, which included a hysterectomy that rendered her cancer-free. The org provides resources and information for patients and lobbies for healthcare policy change.
She is the president of SAG-AFTRA
In 2021, Drescher ran for the presidency of SAG-AFTRA, the union that comprises the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, assuming the role on September 2. She ran on a platform (called the “Unite for Strength” faction) that prioritized “empowering and protecting members,” she told Deadline. “Whether it’s compensation, residuals, safety protections, enforcement, protections from harassment, legislative advocacy, increasing work opportunities, working with our sister organizations in the industry, expanding work opportunities and making sure our contracts stay ahead of technological changes,” she added.
Per Deadline, actors including Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd, J.K. Simmons and Rosario Dawson voiced their support for Drescher’s presidency. “In this new world where streaming is transforming our work and our compensation, we need trailblazing leaders willing to fight for us,” said Alec Baldwin in a supportive video.
Debra Messing, for her part, added at the time: “I have long admired Fran for her tireless activism and powerful voice on women’s health, the LGBT community, and all underrepresented communities.”
When elected, Drescher said in a statement, “I am honored to serve my union in this capacity… Only as a united front will we have strength against the real opposition in order to achieve what we all want: more benefits, stronger contracts and better protections. Let us lock elbows and together show up with strength at the negotiating table!”
What she has said about the actors’ strike
On July 13, 2023, contract negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed. SAG-AFTRA members had voted, on June 5, 97.91% in favor of authorizing a strike before it began AMPTP negotiations on June 7, though that vote did not immediately call for a strike. Now, union leadership has announced it will join the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines of its strike.
In a speech targeting the “entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, A.I.,” Drescher announced, “This is a very big deal and it weighed heavy on us. At some point, you have to say no, we’re not going to take it anymore… We demand respect. You share the wealth, because you cannot exist without us.”
