Actress Fran Drescher made headlines Thursday when she kicked off the union representing entertainers strike with an impassioned speech.
Drescher was once a beloved main character on The Nanny in the nineties. Here is what she has been up to since and how she became the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists President and face of the strike, set to begin at midnight Thursday.
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Fran Fine was Drescher's character on The Nanny and was also the titular nanny in the series that lasted from 1993 to 1999. While Drescher starred in the series, she was also its creator. This was her first writing credit but not her first acting credit, as she appeared in Fame, Nine to Five, and Law and Order. It would go on to win one Emmy, with Drescher receiving two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globes nomination of her own.
She would go on to assist in the production of further iterations of The Nanny in Turkey, Russia, Argentina, and more countries. All the while, she continued to make more television appearances in shows such as Law in Order, The Simpsons, and What I Like About You. It wasn't until 2006 that she was booked for multiple episodes in a sequel to The Nanny called Living with Fran, which only lasted two years.
Later Drescher would try her hand at another television series she wrote called Happily Divorced, which lasted 26 episodes and ended in 2013. It would not receive any Emmy or Golden Globe nominations.
Drescher's voice would be cast in the Hotel Transylvania sequels, the most recent of which came last year. The actress also made a one-episode appearance on the short-lived Mr. Mayor television series. Most recently, Drescher was cast in a made-for-TV movie called Dawn, which was released this year.
Her presidency at SAG-AFTRA came in 2021, when she narrowly beat actor Matthew Modine, most recently of Stranger Things fame, for the position. Previously, the union was headed by producer Gabrielle Carteris, who lasted five years.
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During the weekend before the strike, Drescher was attending the Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Milan, as revealed by influencer Kim Kardashian's Instagram story. Criticism online spiraled around the union president as the union had already passed one negotiation deadline at that point. The vote to strike came the day after the union's 90th anniversary.
SAG-AFTRA represents about 160,000 performers and now joins the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike for over 70 days in what included some 11,500 writers. WGA has come to a head with the same group of studios, networks, and streamers over higher wages. The last time both WGA and SAG-AFTRA were simultaneously on strike was in 1960, with Ronald Reagan at the helm before he ran for president.