Hollywood Actors Guild President Fran Drescher in a speech on July 14, 2023.
Until this Thursday at Fran Drescher (New York, 1957) she was known mainly for having starred in the series «The Nanny» («The Nanny»), but her strike declaration as president of the US Actors Guild has turned her image upside down and made her a combative union leader.
“Greedy Wall Street companies doling out money left and right among their executives and forgetting about essential workers. (…) It’s disgusting, they should be ashamed»sentenced on Thursday the president of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) with its peculiar nasal tone.
His belligerent speech came after a month of unsuccessful negotiations to renew the collective agreement of the interpreters with the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), an entity that includes conglomerates such as Warner Bros. Discovery, television networks of the weight of Fox or streaming platforms like Netflix.
The eyes of the Hollywood “establishment” have hung ever since on an actress with an activist past who left the picturesque neighborhood of Queens to make a name for herself in the City of the Stars, and now tries to remove the foundations of a business she has known his bowels
The interpreter of Fran Fine in “The Nanny” (1993-1999) climbed to the top of SAG-AFTRA just two years ago, by presenting her candidacy under a party known as “United by Force”, in Spanish, ultimately surpassing instance to the alternative led by actor Matthew Modine (“Full Metal Jacket”).
It was precisely that, union, from which the actors union suffered –historically sharply divided between industry superstars and those professionals who act as a livelihood– and so far he’s coping as well as he can.
And this despite the fact that his victory was forged in an environment of great tension with Modine himself, who alleged spurious strategies on the part of Drescher to win the victory and went so far as to state that it would be “judged in the future by the whole world.” or by the God to whom I pray.
But before sitting down that union chair that has been occupied by everyone from Ronald Reagan to Charlton Hestonthe actress had gone through two turbulent decades of her life in which she lost her international fame at the end of the broadcast of “The Nanny” -very popular abroad-, was divorced twice and was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
When he was discharged in 2005, he tried to direct his career with series such as “Living with Fran”, “The Fran Drescher Show” and with the comedy “Happily Divorced”, in which he used his charismatic sense of humor and a attractiveness reserved for women like her, who was Miss New York in the teen version of the contest.
None of these works returned the public recognition that surrounded his figure with “The Nanny”, a title that she also executive produced with her ex-husband, screenwriter Peter Marc Jacobson. So Drescher opted not to get out of the loop entirely, but to spend more time on the activist side of him.
He raised his voice about sexual assaults against women after revealing that she was abused by thieves inside her Los Angeles home in 1985; provided public support to women suffering from uterine tumors by creating the Cancer Schmancer Movement; and wrote two autobiographical books in which she detailed a career that began in 1977.
There is also a political section. He has never hidden his ties to the Democratic Party: he participated in the preparation of the law for the Education and Prevention of Gynecological Cancer with Barack Obama (2009-2017) and was even seen with former president Bill Cliton (1993-2001) in Life Ball, an event to support HIV-infected people held annually in Vienna (Austria).
Meanwhile, he never abandoned that irredeemable vein that arose from time to time and for which he constantly charged against capitalism on his social networks. To the point that New York Magazine dubbed her “Your New Favorite Anti-Capitalist Icon” in 2017.
Five years later, the nanny of “The Nanny” is immersed in a fierce battle that will decide the professional future of 160,000 syndicated Hollywood performers and their relationship with technological advances such as artificial intelligence (AI).
However, in addition to having the sword of Damocles of the Hollywood “establishment” on his head, Drescher will see himself in the coming months with the egos, often excessive, and the enormous influences of many of the actors he represents.
The wave of messages against him because on Monday, just 48 hours before SAG-AFTRA’s contract with AMPTP expired, appeared with Kim Kardashian at a Dolce & Gabbana haute couture show in Puglia (Italy) it could just be a warning. EFE
Fran Drescher is the president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and is one of the actresses leading the strike in Hollywood.
Fran gave a speech to announce the strike where she went against the billionaires who run the studios and… pic.twitter.com/H12XmFpUNN
— Expansion (@ExpansionMx) July 15, 2023