The millionaire anti-capitalist grinding Hollywood to a halt: How Fran Drescher went from earning $1.5M PER EPISODE on The Nanny to endorsing ‘revolutionary politics’ and being the firebrand president behind SAG strikes
- Actors’ union president Fran Drescher has taken center stage in the Hollywood fight for higher pay amid historic industrial action after a fiery rallying speech
- Drescher’s own career has spanned decades of cinema, television and Broadway, but she is most famous for starring in 90’s sitcom The Nanny
- She has spoken about horrific experiences like being raped at gunpoint and battling cancer, while her anti-capitalist views have also made headlines
Actors’ union leader Fran Drescher has taken center stage in the Hollywood fight for higher pay amid historic industrial action following a fiery rallying speech on Thursday.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) president is leading the industry’s first mass walkout since the 1980’s – which also involves performers demanding protection against their jobs being threatened by artificial intelligence.
Drescher’s own career has spanned decades of cinema, television and Broadway, but she is most famous for starring in 90’s sitcom The Nanny, which she created with her husband at the time Peter Marc Jacobson – who is now openly gay.
She reportedly earned $1.5 million per episode during the final season of the show, making her one of the highest-paid actresses in TV at the time, while her net worth is estimated to be between $25 million and $30 million.
Off the screen, the Queens-born 65-year-old is known for her firebrand anti-capitalist views, and overcoming horrific experiences in earlier life – from being raped at gunpoint to battling womb cancer.
Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) president Fran Drescher is leading the industry’s first mass walkout since the 1980’s – which also involves performers demanding protection against their jobs being threatened by artificial intelligence
Drescher’s own career has spanned decades of cinema, television and Broadway, but she is most famous for starring in 90’s sitcom The Nanny. Pictured: Drescher as her character Fran Fine in the Nanny, which she reportedly earned $1.5 million per episode for in the final season
Drescher created and produced The Nanny in 1993 until 1999 along with Peter Marc Jacobson, her high school sweetheart who she was married to for 21 years, until he came out as gay. The couple (pictured in their youth) say they still love each other and will not remarry
Drescher’s acting career also got off to a rocky start in her college days, when she came close to pursuing a very different path.
As a first-year student Drescher dropped out of Queens College, City University of New York, because all the acting classes were filled and she instead pursued a course in cosmetology, according to a 1996 interview with Redbook.
But she managed to secure her first role as a dancer in the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever, in which she asked John Travolta’s character: ‘Are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor?’
The following year, she was cast in several more films, including American Hot Wax and Summer of Fear.
During the 1980s, Drescher scored roles in films like Gorp, The Hollywood Knights, Doctor Detroit, The Big Picture, UHF, and Cadillac Man.
Her most memorable role from the decade was playing publicist Bobbi Flekman in the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap – a character which also made a cameo in the fifth season of Drescher’s The Nanny.
Drescher created the sitcom in 1993 along with Jacobson, her high school sweetheart who she was married to for 21 years. It aired on CBS until 1999.
Reprising the role of Fran Fine, who becomes the nanny of four children before she charms their widower father, Drescher shot to a new level of fame.
She reportedly earned $1.5 million per episode during the final season of the show, making her one of the highest-paid actresses in TV at the time.
The 1990’s saw her star in several more films including Francis Ford Coppola’s 1996 movie Jack, and The Beautician and the Beast the following year – which she also produced.
In 2000 she starred alongside Woody Allen in Picking UP the Piece, before voicing the character of Pearl in 2006 animation Shark Bait.
Drescher returned to television with her own daytime chat show, The Fran Drescher Tawk Show, in 2010, though it was shelved after a trial period.
Estimates for the net worth of New York-born Drescher, who has long expressed opinions to the political left, range from $25 million to $30 million
Semi-autobiographical: Drescher got her big break producing and playing the nasal-voiced bridal shop salesgirl-turned-careworker Fran Fine for six seasons on CBS spanning 1993-1999
The following year, she created sitcom Happily Divorced with Jacobson, who had by then come out as gay and the pair had split.
As part of the show’s promotion, Drescher performed the weddings of three gay couples in New York City using a minister’s licence she received from the Universal Life Church.
She chose the couples through a competition she launched on Facebook called ‘Fran Drescher’s ‘Love is Love’ Gay Marriage Contest, based on the stories they submitted about their relationship origin story and how it has developed.
Drescher branched out to Broadway in 2014, playing stepmother Madame for a 10-week period in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Most recently, she reprised a recurring role in Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania film series, in which she voices Eunice.
Beyond the stage, Drescher – who has Jewish parents and grandparents who immigrated to the US from Romania and Poland – has endured several traumatic experiences, from being raped at gunpoint to battling womb cancer.
Her private life also made headlines when she and Jacobson divorced in 1999 after 21 years of marriage, with her ex coming out as gay.
Drescher said she did not know Jacobson, who she met when they were both just 15 years old, was gay, in large part because they had a very active sex life – which she spoke about in 2015.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com last year, Drescher revealed she would never marry again, and she plans to grow old with Jacobson because ‘we still love each other’. She is also a vocal supporter of LGBT rights.
Drescher joined actors on a picket outside the Netflix office in Los Angeles, California, on Friday – the first day of their industrial action
The couple experienced a horrific ordeal in their late 20’s, when two robbers broke into their Los Angeles home, stole their possessions and raped Drescher and a female friend at gunpoint.
Jacobson was also attacked, tied up, and forced to witness the entire ordeal.
It took Drescher several years to recover from the trauma of the incident, and even longer to tell her story to the press.
In 2020, she revealed how her photographic memory had helped police identify her rapist – who was out on parole at the time – and send him to jail for life.
Drescher informally re-married in 2014, with Indian-American engineer Shiva Ayyadurai at her beach house.
Both said they were married and the event was widely reported as such, but Ayyadurai later said it was ‘not a formal wedding’ but a celebration of their ‘friendship in a spiritual ceremony with close friends and family’.
The couple split two years later.
Drescher has also battled uterine cancer in the early 2000’s, which she wrote about in her book, Cancer Schmancer, which was intended to raise consciousness about the early signs of the disease.
She was admitted to Los Angeles’ Cedars Sinai Hospital in June 2000 to undergo an immediate radical hysterectomy which cleared her of the disease.
On the seventh anniversary of her operation, Drescher announced the launch of the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a charity which aims to ensure women’s cancers are diagnosed in the early stages.
As an outspoken advocate for healthcare, Drescher helped get Johanna’s Law for improved education about cancer passed unanimously through Congress, and she was appointed a diplomat for Women’s Health Issues by the Bush administration.
She traveled the world in the role, working with organizations in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Poland.
Frances Fisher, Joely Fisher, SAG-AFTRA members and supporters join the picket line in support of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike at the SAG-AFTRA Building in California on Friday
‘You don’t need a label of socialist or capitalist’: Fran proudly considers herself an ‘anti-capitalist’ who’s a registered Democrat but identifies with the Green Party
‘Capitalism has become another word for Ruling Class Elite!’ The Queens-born 62-year-old ‘agreed’ with a post calling for a ‘general strike’ against the wealthy ordering employees to return to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Her political exploits also go beyond the field of health, and in 2008 she supported Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, including by attending a Super Democrat rally for her.
She also supported Barack Obama for re-election in 2012, and Joe Biden in 2020.
Drescher describes herself as explicitly anti-capitalist, and she has long expressed concerns about capitalist greed.
Amid the Covid pandemic in 2020, she supported calls for a general strike against the wealthy ordering employees to return to work.
Responding to a Twitter post calling for the strike, she said: ‘I agree. Capitalism has become another word for Ruling Class Elite!’
She had the Covid jabs, but has also spoken out against vaccine mandates.
The two-time Golden Globe nominee proudly considers herself an ‘anti-capitalist’ who’s a registered Democrat but identifies with the Green Party.
‘I really think we need a new hybrid of systems. I’m not anti-making-money, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think making money is a bad thing, per se,’ Fran explained to Vulture back in 2017.
‘But it has to be calibrated within the spectrum of what’s a true value.
‘What I really tell people is, you might be the first ones at a global-warming rally, but meanwhile, do you know what’s in your investment portfolio?
‘We need to not be supporting these companies at all.’
Actors are demanding higher wages as well as protection against their jobs being threatened by artificial intelligence through their walkout
Drescher became the president of SAF-AFTRA in September 2021, following in the footsteps of former President Ronald Reagan, who held the position from 1947-1952, and 1959-1960.
Now, as 160,000 actors launched the strike on Friday, Drescher made headlines for torching multi-millionaire studio executives over their six-figure salaries in a fiery speech to fellow union members.
A vintage clip of The Nanny has also resurfaced since, showing Drescher, in character as Fran Fine, refusing to cross a picket line because it would hurt her American-Jewish family’s union members.
Source: Read Full Article