The Nanny

By AmericasNewsToday.Org staff

The Nanny is a situation comedy co-produced by Sternin & Fraser Ink, Inc. and Highschool Sweethearts Productions in association with TriStar Television for CBS. It first aired from November 3, 1993 to June 23, 1999 and starred actress Fran Drescher as Fran Fine, a charming and bubbly Jewish Queens native who casually becomes the pantyhose-clad nanny of three children from the New York upper class. The show's theme song was written and performed by Ann Hampton Callaway.

Created and executive produced by Drescher and her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, The Nanny took much of its inspiration from Drescher's personal life, involving names and characteristics based on near relatives and friends. The show earned a Rose d'Or and one Emmy Award, out of a total of 13 nominations, and moreover garnered Drescher two Golden Globe nominations.

The plot of the show revolved around nasal-voiced Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) from Flushing, Queens, who, fresh out of her job as a bridal consultant in her boyfriend's shop, was peddling cosmetics on the Upper East Side doorstep of a wealthy and widowed Englishman, Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (played by former Days of our Lives star Charles Shaughnessy). When he mistakenly believes Fran has been sent by a nanny agency, she quickly seizes the opportunity to become the nanny for his three children. But soon Fran, with her off-beat nurturing and no-nonsense honesty, touches Maxwell as well as the kids. It was a situation of blue collar meets blue blood, as Fran gave the prim-and-proper Maxwell and his children a dose of "Queens logic," helping them become a healthy, happy family.

Proudly running the Sheffield household is the butler, Niles (Daniel Davis), who watches all events with a bemused eye and levels problems with his quick wit. Niles quickly recognizes Fran's gift for bringing warmth into the family and becomes fast friends with her. He does his best to undermine Maxwell's socialite business partner, C.C. Babcock (Lauren Lane), in their ongoing game of one-upmanship. C.C. views Fran with a mixture of skepticism and jealousy, as they both have desires for the very available Mr. Sheffield.

Perpetually hovering close by were Fran's typically obsessive and food-loving "Jewish mother" Sylvia (Renee Taylor); her rarely-seen but oft-mentioned father Morty (Steve Lawrence); her cigarette-addicted senile grandmother Yetta (Ann Morgan Guilbert), dispensing nonsensical advice and often erroneously believing Sheffield to already be Fran's husband and his children to be hers as well, a belief she does not keep to herself; and Fran's dim-witted best friend Val Toriello (Rachel Chagall), keeping her company on her perpetual quest for a husband, and being a constant reminder that things can always get worse.

-- Although largely operating around that main ensemble cast, The Nanny featured an enormous number of guest stars over the years. Notable repeat guests included Pamela Anderson as Fran's nemesis Heather Biblow, Ray Charles as Yetta's fiancé Sammy, Lainie Kazan as Fran's paternal aunt Freida, Spalding Gray as Dr. Jack Miller, and Rita Moreno as Coach Stone. Most celebrities guest-starred in single episodes as themselves, primarily appearing in connection with Maxwell's business relations, such as actors and actresses Chevy Chase, Erik Estrada, Joe Lando, Shari Lewis, Bette Midler, Jane Seymour, Elizabeth Taylor, Lynn Redgrave and Hunter Tylo; media personalities Roger Clinton, Jr., Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Donald Trump; and musicians such as Celine Dion, Elton John, Eartha Kitt, Patti LaBelle and Brian Setzer among many others. Rapper Coolio, Steve Lawrence, and Whoopi Goldberg, however, guest starred as both characters and themselves in different episodes.

While starring, Fran Drescher also reprised her role of Bobbi Fleckman from the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap and made a cameo appearance as herself in the second last episode; Charles Shaughnessy followed with a double role as a foreign sultan in a special episode. Drescher's real-life parents, Morty and Sylvia Drescher made appearances as Fran's Uncle Stanley and Aunt Rose; her Pomeranian Chester appeared as C.C.'s pet in more than a dozen episodes. Renee Taylor's husband, Joe Bologna, and their son Gabriel also had minor roles as doctors on the show. Ray Romano made a crossover as Ray Barone, Fran's former fellow student, linking The Nanny with his comedy Everybody Loves Raymond.

Although Drescher and Jacobson had previously worked on various ideas for potential television shows, it was not until 1991 — the same year Drescher decided to visit friend Twiggy Lawson and her family in London, England — the pair came up with early drafts for The Nanny. Inspired by a culture-clashy shopping tour with Lawson's teenage daughter which saw Drescher actually functioning in a less parental but "humorous ... kind of Queens logic, self-serving advice" mode, she convinced her husband starting work of what she called "doing a spin on [the 1965 film] The Sound of Music." However, it was not until a transatlantic flight to Paris that Drescher persuaded fellow passenger Jeff Sagansky, at the time president of CBS Corporation, for whom she had starred in the short-lived TV series Princesses, to meet with her and Jacobson when Drescher returned to Los Angeles, California.

Back in Los Angeles, the pair pitched their idea to Tim Flack and Joe Voci, both in comedy development at CBS. Sagansky brought in experienced producers Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, another husband-and-wife team with whom Drescher had worked before during guesting on Who's the Boss? in 1985 and 1986. Interested, both couples teamed up to write the script for the pilot together, creating a character with the intention to build off Drescher's image. "Our business strategy was to create a show that was going to complement our writing, complement me as a talent," Drescher said in an 1997 interview with the Hollywood Reporter. As a result, the characters draw deeply on the Drescher family, including Fran Fine's parents, Sylvia and Morty, and grandmother Yetta, who all were named after Drescher' s real-life counterparts.

Most of all early The Nanny episodes were shot in front of a live studio audience on Stage 6 at the Culver Studios —during later seasons the taping was no longer performed before an audience due to the complexities of the fantasy sequences, costume changes etc.— generally on Friday nights. Scripts for a new episode were issued the Monday before for a read-through; Wednesday was rehearsal and network run-through day, and final scripts were issued on Thursday.

Nearly 100 crew members were involved in the shooting of a single episode. Although Drescher, Fraser, Jacobson and Sternin, the show's only executive producers for the first four seasons, coordinated "pretty much everything" at the beginning, according to Sternin, they eventually found their niche and in the following years, Drescher and Sternin decided to focus on writing story outlines, while Jacobson presided over the writing team, and Fraser observed the run-throughs. The four of them were later joined by Frank Lombardi, Caryn Lucas, and Diane Wilk.
Airing originally on Wednesday evenings — and often broadcast opposite Home Improvement — the show languished its first year. When it was nearly cancelled, Sagansky stepped in as its champion. According to Jacobson: "At all those affiliate meetings, he used to say, 'Stick by "The Nanny!"' He knew it was something special." The sitcom was the first new show delivered to CBS for the 1993 season and the highest-tested pilot at the network in years. The series was also hugely successful internationally, especially in Australia, were it was one of the highest rated programmes during the mid-late 1990s.

Although soon emerging as a favourite among the company, sponsors questioned whether the writers had ventured too far in terms of ethnicity and Drescher acted too obviously Jewish. The actress who experienced pressure to alter her character’s identification, however, declined to change Fran Fine into an Italian American: "On TV, you have to work fast, and the most real, the most rooted in reality to me is Jewish. I wanted to do it closest to what I knew." By contrast, the producers came to the conclusion that to oppose her should be a family of British origin, so "she wouldn't come across as Jewish so much as the American you were rooting for," Sternin explained. "The idea was to make her the American girl who happens to be Jewish rather than the Jewish girl working for the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)."

The Nanny has been broadcast in more than 80 countries worldwide. In addition, several local versions of the show have been produced in other countries. These shows follow the original scripts very closely, but with minor alterations in order to adapt to their respective country's culture. The remake in Russia was so popular that some original American writers were commissioned to write new scripts after all original episodes were remade.

The Nanny's Official Site: http://www.thenannytv.com/.

Article photo: "The Nanny Reunion: A Nosh to Remember," Fran Drescher and the cast of the popular sitcom The Nanny reunite at her home in Malibu to reminisce about their days on the show over dinner. Original airdate: December 6, 2004.