Fran Drescher
Actor, Writer and Unionist
Many people who did not know Fran Drescher was president of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG- AFTRA) were surprised to see the actor give a fiery speech when talks between the union and studios failed in July.
“We are being victimised by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us,” Drescher fumed in the now-viral speech at a press conference in LA.
“I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.”
Despite appearing in a number of television shows and films over the years, Drescher is likely most recognised as her iconic character Fran Fine from sitcom The Nanny, which aired from 1993 to 1999.
In 2021, Drescher went up against fellow actor Matthew Modine for the SAG-AFTRA presidency, ultimately winning the top spot. She has railed against corporate greed for a number of years and has championed LGBTQI rights following her former husband, The Nanny showrunner Peter Marc Jacobson, coming out as gay after they divorced. In her 1996 autobiography, Enter Whining, she wrote about being raped at gunpoint in 1985, a traumatic event that she did not speak about for years and which she says caused her to have uterine cancer 10 years later.
Although it’s 24 years since she played Nanny Fine, Drescher has proven that the sharp tongue she bore on screen is the same off screen. When Disney CEO Bob Iger said the actors’ demands were not realistic, Drescher fired back.
“There he is, sitting in his designer clothes and just got on his private jet at the billionaires’ camp, telling us we’re unrealistic when he’s making $78,000 a day,” she excoriated him. “How do you deal with someone like that, who’s so tone-deaf? Are you an ignoramus? I don’t understand.” Ouch
