‘I’m Not The Nanny.’ Hollywood’s Fiery Activist Gears Up for a Long Fight.

She has the star power, the middle-class roots and, of course, the voice—now all Fran Drescher needs is to prove her worth as a labor leader to 140,000 out-of-work actors.

The 65-year-old performer known for the ‘90s sitcom “The Nanny” who once talked about bringing glitz and glamour to her role as president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists suddenly finds herself in a very different situation. Now her uniform is T-shirts and leggings as she pickets in broiling heat with the rest of the union in its strike over a new three-year contract with studios. 

Her next step may prove even more challenging: Holding together a union famous for its infighting if the strike drags on into the fall or even winter, as many expect.

“I’m not ‘The Nanny,’” she said in a recent interview. “I’m an activist on behalf of labor.” 

In recent days Drescher has occupied the national spotlight in a way that she hasn’t for decades, unleashing her fast-talking New York persona to convey her disgust with the studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The actors join striking writers over shared concerns about issues including compensation, residuals and the use of artificial intelligence in artistic work. The groups argue that the paradigm shift brought by streaming isn’t reflected in their contracts. 

Among the key issues dividing the two sides are the size of increases in both the general payment structure for actors as well higher royalty payments and protections regarding the use of artificial intelligence. 

SAG is also seeking that 2% of streaming revenue be paid to performers, with a formula developed to compensate them based on a show’s popularity. 

The Alliance, whose representation includes Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Apple and Amazon, have taken issue with many of the proclamations coming from Drescher and SAG about the negotiations.

In a statement issued earlier this week, the Alliance said SAG is deliberately distorting offers worth more than $1 billion in wage increases, pension and health benefits and improved residuals as well as protections regarding the use of artificial intelligence.

Drescher is making a play for hearts and minds even if public opinion won’t decide this dispute, spicing up her labor rhetoric with dollops of Yiddish, sound bites about corporate overlords and clichés delivered in her cawfee-tawk accent. “The jig is up.” “Wake up and smell the coffee.” “Moving around furniture on the Titanic.” She conveys a mix of two seemingly opposing forces: the Hollywood celebrity who can leverage her stardom and the plain-spoken advocate for the little guy. 

“As a star that I am, I do get special treatment,” she said from her home in Malibu, Calif., talking in such long bursts that the only way to get a word in was to interrupt her. “So yes, I do have a unique situation. But I am a girl from Queens. I am very connected to the provincial world that I grew up with.”

Drescher was the outsider labor lifers didn’t see coming, entering the race for SAG president just days before the 2021 election without any real union experience beyond paying her dues. She threw her hat in the ring and narrowly beat Matthew Modine, a veteran activist who had long complained that actors were among the biggest casualties of the streaming wars. 

Drescher’s close friend Rosie O’Donnell said the union first contacted her to run for the top slot, but she didn’t want it. Instead, she recommended Drescher, who she said has a “Norma Rae-like ability to inspire.” 

“She’s like a stand-up. She can succinctly choose the words that are going to have the most impact in the smallest amount of time,” O’Donnell said. “When I heard her speaking, I’m like, ‘This is why it’s wonderful to have a performer as the president.’” 

Drescher had been pursuing a Broadway version of “The Nanny” when she took a turn into labor politics. She had experience lobbying for various causes in Washington, she said, plus she’d been ruminating over giving up the seminal character she created. “I was wondering how I was going to feel when a young girl who could sing great becomes the new nanny,” she said.

During the campaign, Drescher steered clear of specifics, focusing more on bringing two fractious union parties together—the more moderate Unite for Strength, her party in the campaign, and Membership First, a party out of power since 2009 that argues the union has cut unfavorable deals with studios. 

“I didn’t really realize how dysfunctional and uber-partisan it all was and how marginalized some members, some groups felt, and underserved in contracts,” Drescher said.  

She stepped into the job with a message.

“I said to everybody, ‘Listen. I have the skill set to turn it all around and help you guys,’” she said, “‘but I don’t want to know anything from the past, I don’t want to hear stories, I don’t know what party you align yourself with and frankly I don’t care. You’re all union members to me.’” 

Neither the union nor the Alliance can afford a drawn-out work stoppage. For the industry, it would have an adverse effect on both movie and TV pipelines for the coming years and those consumers would be hard to win back.

Just a few weeks ago, Drescher and SAG signaled that a strike might be averted. She and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland issued a video to members saying negotiations were “extremely productive” and an agreement to extend talks beyond a June 30 deadline to July 12 was reached.

It caught the other side by surprise. People inside the Alliance said little if any progress had been made at the time of its release. 

But the video served another purpose: galvanizing the membership to push Drescher and SAG leadership to play hardball and not cut a quick deal and go home.

Drescher doesn’t dive into the weeds of the issues dividing the two sides. She speaks in broad terms about who she deems greedy CEOs and leaves the specifics on raising minimum salaries and boosting residuals to her lieutenants. 

At last week’s strike announcement, Drescher’s fiery speech connected. A “Nanny” clip featuring character Fran Fine refusing to cross a picket line went viral. Striking performers sang the theme song from the show. “Holy Cow. Go Fran Go!” Bob Odenkirk, star of “Better Call Saul,” wrote on Twitter.  

“It was just a miracle that it came out as succinctly as it did,” Drescher said of her off-the-cuff remarks, adding that she is wary of repeating herself in a similar situation. “I asked them, ‘Moving forward, if I have to make a speech, you got to let me know.’”

Some on the other side of the negotiating table say Drescher is using incendiary language and misleading statements to fire up a membership that views any contrary opinion as fake news.

In a livestreamed conversation with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders this week, Drescher said of one of the Alliance’s negotiators: “I looked at a guy who, you know, obviously was religious and took off for Shabbat and whatever, and I’m thinking, ‘Maybe he’s a great family man. Maybe he makes donations. Maybe he supports his community. But his job is to screw me and my members.’”

In a barrage of interviews with global outlets over the past week, Drescher has publicized the union plight more than most lower-profile actors ever could. But with that exposure comes growing concern among some union activists that the strike is becoming more of a Fran Drescher moment than a SAG moment.

In the past, Drescher said, she has been urged to run for public office in California. And since the strike, she said, “many very accomplished people” encouraged her to bring in her own cadre of experts to oversee her new public profile. 

“As this begins to take on momentum, we’re going to need your own inner sanctum of advisers,” she said an associate told her.

Drescher works with a team of negotiators led by national executive director Crabtree-Ireland and Secretary-Treasurer Joely Fisher, who have spent the last several weeks sitting in an office in a mall in the San Fernando Valley battling the alliance until talks broke off. 

Drescher accuses studio executives of unbridled avarice. Stars who make millions of dollars for a single movie are entitled to their entire paychecks because they are so central to the enterprise, she said. “What the hell are these CEOs doing besides flying around in private jets and going to billionaire camps?”

Since her election, Drescher has won over some prior opponents including Fisher, who had run on Modine’s ticket in the last election and has a long history of union service. Drescher’s outsider status offered a clean slate that helped unify members, Fisher said, and the two are running for re-election together this September.

Write to Ellen Gamerman at [email protected] and Joe Flint at [email protected]