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Fran Drescher became known as a character actress in the 80s. She moved into the 90s with an amazing opportunity for a brand-new sitcom. That sitcom was The Nanny, a show that has become an iconic part of pop culture and television history. The show achieved huge success thanks to the comedic timing of Drescher’s performance and the amazing fashion.
But what has she been up to since the show ended? Drescher has been quite busy in the years since and she’s even left the door open for a potential reboot of the iconic sitcom.
Fran Drescher Got An Early Role In A Weird Al Movie
In the eighties, “Weird Al” Yankovic was making a name for himself with his parodies of popular songs. Yankovic’s music videos were getting heavy rotation on MTV and his AL-TV specials made people see him as a comedic personality rather than just a musician.
Yankovic and his manager Jay Levy decided it would be nice to do a Weird Al movie. According to Yankovic, he was interested in developing an idea that gave him the opportunity to do several gags and parodies within the movie. The film, titled UHF, ended up revolving around a UHF station that Yankovic’s character owned.
Fran Drescher appeared in the film as Pamela Finklestein. Pamela began as a secretary at the station and became an on-air reporter. During this phase in her career, Drescher was working as a character actress. She would also appear in films such as Gorp, The Hollywood Knights, Doctor Detroit, and The Big Picture.
UHF was released in the summer of 1989. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t well received by critics. The box office numbers didn’t fare very well, either. It was released the same year as several high-profile films and according to Yankovic, “it got completely swallowed up” as a result.
Yankovic would experience a career resurgence in 1992 when he parodied Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Drescher would soon get a career-boost herself.
The Nanny Changed Fran Drescher’s Career
The Nanny premiered in 1993 and ran for six seasons until 1999. Drescher starred as Fran Fine, a former sales girl at a bridal shop who became a nanny for a widowed Broadway producer, Maxwell Sheffield, and his three children. Fran’s outgoing personality and unique sense of fashion was a stark contrast to the lifestyle of the Sheffields. However, the two worlds coming together made for great comedy and the show was a huge success.
“[The series was] an anomaly unto itself. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. The sexual tension is off the scale. It’s a Cinderella fantasy. The clothes are just like a beautiful, incredible fashion show every single week,” Drescher told Harper’s Bazaar. “It’s got that kind of double entendre where you can watch it with the family, and everybody of every different age will enjoy it in their own way. And yet, it’s got kind of like edgy, gay humor. It never lost its cool.”
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In addition to the show’s incredibly funny characters, the fashion Drescher’s character wore got a lot of attention. Drescher became a fashion icon thanks to the show.
“I can’t tell you how blessed I feel that I am part of a project that has been such an amazing, enduring, incredible piece of art,” Drescher said. “The clothes just made such a powerful impact on everybody. It was such a visual treat. [We understood] right from the get-go that television is a visual media, and everything has to be beautiful, and everything has to be better than real life. Comedy is an escape, and that’s the way we wanted it to be.”
What Fran Drescher Has Been Up To Since The Show Ended
Drescher’s next chapter wouldn’t be such a pleasant one. In 2000, Drescher was admitted to Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and diagnosed with uterine cancer. As a result, an immediate radical hysterectomy was performed to treat the disease. Drescher had been experiencing symptoms for two years prior and was misdiagnosed by eight different doctors.
Following the operation, Drescher was given a clean bill of health and no further treatment was needed. In 2007, she formed the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a non-profit organization whose goal is to make sure women’s cancers will be diagnosed within Stage 1. Stage 1 is when the cancer is the most curable. Thanks to her efforts, H.R. 1245 (also known as Johanna’s Law) was passed and Drescher is acknowledged in the Congressional Record.
Drescher appeared in several guest roles on television shows after The Nanny ended. Her first sitcom after The Nanny came in 2005 when Living With Fran premiered. Charles Shaughnessy, who played Maxwell Sheffield in The Nanny, appeared in the show as her characters’ ex-husband. The show was canceled after two seasons.
Drescher returned to television in 2010 with the premiere of her talk show, The Fran Drescher Show. The show was shelved due to its moderate success in test runs, despite debuting with strong ratings.
In 2011, Drescher premiered the sitcom Happily Divorced. Drescher created the show with her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson. The show was inspired by their own experiences as a married couple. The show ran for two seasons and was canceled in 2013. The following year, Drescher made her Broadway debut in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. She played stepmother Madame for a 10-week engagement, replacing Harriet Harris.
In 2021, all episodes of The Nanny were added to HBO Max. Drescher has even left the door open for a possible reboot.
“There’s two ways to go with a Nanny reboot,” Drescher said. “It’s either me and Charles Shaughnessy reviving the characters that we originated. In that case, I think that I might be a fashion influencer and a women’s rights activist or something, which would have been things that being a Sheffield might’ve opened doors for me to do.
“Or, we can bring the series right into the moment with a young cast—bring it into the 2020s and get a whole different cast. Maybe even more people of color in the lead roles. So it could go either way.”
