Queen of comedy
LEXI LANDSMAN
FRAN Drescher put the awk in New Yawk. She made big hair and shawt skirts popular, and created a lovable Jewish television character -— The Nanny’s Fran Fine -— whose nasal whine burst through television screens worldwide in the 1990s.
With one of the most famous authentic voices in Hollywood — “cause who could make this accent up?” -— Drescher is a fawce to be reckoned with.
She’s got a vivacious personality to match her voluminous hair, an enviable shoe collection (she bought 20 pairs of Uboot Ugg boots while Down Under this month) and a dog she calls Queen Esther.
She’s multitalented -— an award-winning television actress, comedian, screenwriter and producer -— and she’s also the founder of the Cancer Schmancer Foundation.
When I list these glowing attributes, I almost expect to hear her respond with something Fran Fine would say, like: “Oh stop … wait … go on — hahaha!”
Instead, she reminds me she’s also a public diplomacy envoy for women’s health issues working under Hillary Clinton, and she’s got an organic skincare range called FranBrand.
Her response is a sharp indicator that though the celebrity is better known for her funny side, she’s used her fame to get some serious messages across to fans.
“I do have a diverse amount of interests and passions but nowadays everything gets informed into my philosophy for women empowerment and women’s health advocacy -— living preventatively and early detection of cancer,” she says. “I try and make my position known in whatever it is that I’m doing.”
Indeed, behind the humour of the colourful character is a strong woman who has survived cancer and a brutal rape, and found the courage and strength to talk about both.
She might have become a household name as the ditzy Fran Fine, but there is nothing stereotypical or vague about Drescher.
“I got famous and I got cancer,” she says without waver, “and I lived to talk about it. I’ve pretty much dedicated my life to that now.”
Born in Flushing, Queens, Drescher was a “chubby kid” brought up by working-class parents in a Jewish home.
“My parents are not religious but they were very respectful of the Jewish heritage and very appreciative of the struggles of our people and they passed that on, and we celebrated the high holy days as a family,” she says.
“I grew up with a great deal of pride for my people and our heritage.”
Her grandmother taught her parrot Yiddish and Drescher fondly recalls it saying: “Kish mein touchess -— kiss my ass.”
She lets out her trademark full-throttle laugh, the one her fans relish.
Indeed, it is her love of Judaism and its funny side that played a critical role in the success of The Nanny.
The show -— which she co-created, produced, wrote, directed and starred in -— centred around the charming and bubbly Jewish Queens native Fran Fine, who arrives at the door of a wealthy widowed Englishman Maxwell Sheffield and becomes the nanny of his three children.
It took much of its inspiration from Drescher’s personal life.
Despite having already accrued a string of TV and film roles by the time the show first aired in 1993, it was the Emmy Award-winning series that propelled her to instant stardom.
Like all things typical of Drescher, the show was born by a stroke of luck and chutzpah.
On an airplane on the way to France in the early 1990s, Drescher discovered the then president of CBS Network Jeff Sagansky was on her flight. She took the opportunity to corner him and pitch a sitcom idea — even though she didn’t have one yet.
“I spent nine hours convincing him he needed to hear the ideas of a show of my own,” she laughs.
He agreed to meet her when they were both back on Los Angeles turf. Yet, her luck seemed to be changing course when her trip to France turned awry upon discovering her friend’s toddlers were around. “They kept crying and I thought I would kill myself,” she says frankly.
She didn’t, of course, and instead flew to London to meet Twiggy — her former co-star of the short-lived sitcom Princesses.
It was there, after spending time with the model’s British family, she had an epiphany.
“I remember in middle of night, I called my husband and said, ‘I think I have an idea to pitch to the network. What do think about a spin on the Sound of Music, only instead of Julie Andrews, I come to the door?'” she recalls. “He said, ‘that’s it, that’s the one we’re going to pitch when you get back’ and the rest is history.”
When she got green-lighted to write the pilot for the show, CBS said they would buy it outright if her character was Italian. But Drescher “dug [her] spike heels in the ground”.
“I decided I wasn’t going to compromise. I was going to do it the best way I knew how … And as it turned out, whatever fears or concerns anyone had about spinning a show around a strong Jewish woman were allayed because the show became very quickly a global success.”
The show’s success not only reached Israel, but also Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, leading her to be honoured at the Knesset.
“It’s very gratifying the praise, support, recognition that I get for the role that I play, particularly, I think, in making a Jewish character a centerpiece in a television series,” she reflects. “Certainly being honoured at the Knesset was the icing on the cake.”
Despite her eclectic career, Drescher’s life hasn’t always been bright lights and red carpets.
In 1985, Drescher was having dinner with her husband Peter Marc Jacobson and a friend when two armed intruders broke into their home. Drescher, then in her late 20s, and her friend were brutally raped while Jacobson was tied up. The rapist got two life sentences, but his partner and brother was handed only a 15-year sentence.
“You can’t rewrite history, you can only learn from it,” the star wrote in her 1996 New York Times best-seller Enter Whining. After therapy and support groups, she overcame the harrowing ordeal with the ¬≠attitude: “Once you bottom out, there’s nowhere to go but up.”
And for a while, things were looking up.
The Nanny was created a few years later and ran successfully for six years. She enjoyed the worldwide success the show garnered but when it ended in 1999, so too did her marriage to her high-school sweetheart.
Soon after, her health took a turn for the worse. For two years, she was misdiagnosed and mistreated for a condition she didn’t actually have. It was only her eighth doctor that conducted a straightforward test none had thought to take, revealing that she had uterine cancer.
“They thought I had a peri-meno¬≠pausal condition cause I was actually younger and thinner than the majority of women who get uterine cancer,” she says, her voice hinting at residues of past anger. “Still, 25 per cent of us are younger and thinner, so it’s unfortunate that when you are part of that 25 per cent more often than not you can slip between the cracks.”
Drescher had a radical hysterectomy and was lucky to be in stage one of the disease aiding her recovery, unlike other women who can be dealt a death sentence when they receive the diagnosis.
“I [felt] that I should use my good luck to try and change the way things are and raise consciousness that early detection is the cure.”
So in 2002, she wrote Cancer Schmancer to tell her story of survival so it wouldn’t happen to others. Using her humour, the title was an act of defiance reflecting that she wouldn’t let the cancer beat her.
Five years later, the Cancer Schmancer Movement and Cancer Schmancer Fountation were born.
The work of Cancer Schmancer is dedicated to lowering mortality rates by transforming women from patients into informed medical consumers, educating women on the importance and methods of early detection and shifting the priority from just looking for a cure, to prevention and early detection.
“We reach millions of people each year,” Drescher enthuses. “In so doing, we’re hoping to reduce mortalities and really change the way people think about cancer.”
Today, Drescher is no longer just using her nasal voice to make her fans laugh, but to spread health and women empowerment messages. And she gets her message across loud and clear, because who could forget that voice?
She’s off the blind-dating circuit and has happily had the same boyfriend for over a year now. She’s still enamoured with her dog — Queen Esther — and she still has an effervescent personality, big hair and lots of shoes.
From her humble Queens beginnings, she’s paved the road for female comedians and done plenty for Jewish comedy.
Her life is, in her own words, “loud, hearty, and full to the brim”.
“Whatever I do,” she says, “I do with gusto.”
To learn more about Fran Drescher and Cancer Schmancer, visit www.cancerschmancer.org.
Not just a nanny …
THOUGH she’s most recognisable as the star of The Nanny, Fran Drescher has played a number of other film and television roles.
In the 2005 series, Living with Fran, she played Fran Reeves, a frantic Jewish divorcee who falls in love with Riley Douglas Martin — a man half her age, who moves in with her and her two adolescent children.
She also played a lead role in the short-lived TV series Princesses, alongside the legendary supermodel Twiggy.
She played memorable characters in Picking up the Pieces (2000), The Beautician and the Beast (1997), Wedding Band (1990), Cadillac Man (1990), The Hollywood Knights (1980), This is Spinal Tap (1984), American Hot Wax (1978), Summer of Fear (1978) and Saturday Night Fever (1977).
She’s had guest roles in Entourage, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Simpsons, What I Like about You, Good Morning, Miami and Charmed Lives, among others.
In 1996, Drescher was chosen as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People magazine.
She has been nominated for an Emmy twice for an outstanding lead actress in a comedy series — in 1996 and 1997 for her role in The Nanny.
Drescher has been the recipient of the John Wayne Institute’s Woman of Achievement Award, the Gilda Award, the City of Hope Woman of the Year Award, the Hebrew University Humanitarian Award, and the City of Hope Spirit of Life Award.
She was runner-up in the 1973 Miss New York Teen pageant.
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