Fran Drescher had to fight to keep The Nanny Jewish

It’s hard to imagine The Nanny, a.k.a. Fran Drescher, playing any other version of the memorable Jewish character she popularized in the 1990s. Yet according to a new interview with the 62-year-old, not everyone was cool with Fran Fine being Jewish. In fact, someone with deep pockets very much wanted her to be Italian.Drescher spilt tea on the origins of The Nanny in a profile published in The Cut recently, when she revealed the entire show started after she cornered an executive on an airplane (“I ran into the bathroom to put some makeup on”), and got him to agree to a meeting with her. From there, she and her now-out gay ex-husband—and forever writing partner—Peter Marc Jacobson, developed the show. Although the network brought in additional writers to help, the entire process seemed to be going well, right up until a major conglomerate offered to sponsor the show… only if Fran was rewritten to be Italian.[video_embed id='-1']RELATED: Beyonce and Jay-Z hire team of nannies[/video_embed]“We thought about it because we knew it was our big break,” Drescher told the publication, “and we didn’t want to be difficult. But I thought of Neil Simon because he said, ‘Write what you know.’ I didn’t know Italian like I know Jewish. So I mustered up my chutzpah and told them Fran Fine must be Jewish. And they said, ‘Okay.’”The studio also wanted Fran to wear T-shirts and jeans in order to be more relatable, but Drescher and Jacobson doubled down on Fine's now iconic bright wardrobe, making the sets and backgrounds more neutral to have the colours pop even more.

 

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Back cover of New York Mag! Fashion issue! Bloomberg on the front.

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Fran Fine went on to become the first main Jewish character played by a Jewish actress since Molly Goldberg in the 1940s, and many of the show’s storylines centred around her faith and upbringing. It wasn’t a one-dimensional portrayal of Judaism either; Drescher wrote the good, bad, and the ugly. Rachel Bloom, who created and starred in the Golden Globe-winning My Crazy-Ex Girlfriend, and who is developing The Nanny into a Broadway musical with Drescher, remembers her experiences with The Nanny. She told The Cut that it wasn’t “only the Judaism” that stood out. “It was being too much, being loud, being different. It was a lot of things that I hadn’t seen before.”These risks translated into several award nominations and a place in history for Drescher, whom many fans will forever recognize for her distinct voice. Since then she’s gone on to star in several shows that highlight her unique personality and story, like Living With Fran (in which she juggles a family and a younger boyfriend), and Happily Divorced (in which she lives with her newly out, gay ex-husband). Write what you know indeed.Drescher currently stars in NBC’s latest sitcom, Indebted, but rumours of a Nanny reboot continue to swirl around. “Sony has done very well by The Nanny,” Drescher said. “I mean, something that is this popular a quarter of a century later, that’s pretty decent.”[video_embed id='1911618']BEFORE YOU GO: Meet your new fave celebrity dogs of Instagram[/video_embed]