50 THE CUT | MARCH 2–15, 2020
flowers go into vases they received as wedding gifts. She under-
went a hysterectomy as part of her cancer treatment and never
had kids. “I think I would have been a good mom,” she says,
“and sometimes I think I kind of missed out on that.”
That makes Indebted’s Debbie, a doting grandmother and a
frisky mate to a graying husband (Steven Weber), a different
type of Drescher character and a slightly bittersweet one as
well. On the show, Debbie hovers over Adam Pally and Abby
Elliott, who play its central characters, a youngish married
couple who are tending to both their own kids and their
regressing, neo-adolescent parents. Drescher took care to
insert enough Fran into the character to make it her own; early
scripts, she said, made Debbie more of a traditional, hectoring
mother-in-law type. “I’m not that actress. I cannot get away
with that,” she says. “I’m a star. People are tuning in to see who
they’re used to seeing. You want to get some heavy character
actress, older woman, to be this pain in the ass in the house
and have this, you know, antagonistic relationship with the
daughter-in-law like they did in Everybody Loves Raymond,
be my guest. But that’s not me.” Drescher turned out to be a
bright spot in Indebted’s otherwise rough rollout. Reviews so
far have been grim. The exception is Drescher,
whom Variety singled out as “the only person
who seems to be trying,” in a performance that is
“a reminder of an old-fashioned sitcom sparkle.”
“Old-fashioned” may be a tell. The show is a sit-
com in the kid-friendly, yuks-and-shticks mold
(multi-camera, guffawing studio audience), which
has not fared well critically in the age of single-cam
auteurs and HBO gore. It is the safest of network
TV. “I think we’re going to see them coming back,”
Drescher says. Her characters are lovable and styl-
ish; unlike most Emmy bait, she is proudly, unapol-
ogetically uncontroversial. (“You can’t sit down with your fam-
ily and watch Game of Thrones,” Bloom says. “I mean, I’m sure
some people do. I wouldn’t recommend it.”) Family-friendly
fare syndicates, and it performs worldwide. Drescher is living
proof. “From the studio standpoint, that’s where the money is,”
she says. “Sony has done very well by The Nanny.I mean,
something that is this popular a quarter of a century later,
that’s pretty decent.”
Pretty decent has made Drescher a wealthy woman. She
loves to work, she says, but she doesn’t have to. “I don’t need
the money,” she says. “And if you don’t need the money, that
takes a little bit of fire out of your belly.” But stardom agrees
with her, and shows like Indebted offer, if they catch on, a path-
way back to the televised mainstream. Drescher has already
made her peace with whatever the show’s fate may be. “As a
Buddhist—or a Bu-Jew, which is more to the point of what I
am, really—balance is a big part of your daily practice,” she
says. “And I try and find balance in everything. I never forget
where I come from. And inside, I’m still a chubby girl from
Queens, anyway.”
THE COMMISSARY at The Wing does not offer espresso mar-
tinis, but for Drescher, they are inclined to make an exception.
So it was that on a recent Tuesday night, a few empty glasses
were on a side table, drained but for the telltale damp coffee
beans. Drescher was on hand to screen the pilot episode of
Indebted for a crowd of 200 and hold a Q&A after. She is one
of The Wing’s presiding spirits; Fran Fine has a phone booth
named in her honor there. (Fellow honorees include Ramona
Quimby and Lisa Simpson.) Audrey Gelman, The Wing’s co-
founder (smart, ambitious, Jewish) loves Fran Drescher
(smart, ambitious, Jewish). “Im crying ok,” she wrote on Insta-
gram when they met.
But the crowd at The Wing testified that Fran’s appeal is not
limited to those most categorically similar to her. The too-
muchness of The Nanny, from Fran’s wardrobe of leopard,
sequins, and skintight to her clarion call, didn’t alienate Mid-
dle America: America, and the world, ate it up. Her appeal cut
across age, race, and creed. Shanae Brown, who runs the Ins-
tagram account @WhatFranWore, which is dedicated to
tracking down and identifying Fran Fine’s outfits for an audi-
ence of almost 300,000, isn’t a young, Jewish striver from the
city. She’s a 30-year-old Jamaican patient-care technician liv-
ing in Atlanta.
Brown doesn’t wear the sequined vests, the hourglass cocktail
dresses, the Todd Oldham and Moschino and Ferré and, Lord
have mercy, Allen Schwartz that Fran Fine did. But then neither
does Fran Drescher. The show’s costumes were a fan-
tasy creation, a TV-land exaggeration, by the costume
designer Brenda Cooper, who won an Emmy for her
efforts. The studio, Jacobson recalled, originally
pushed for Fran to wear T-shirts and jeans in an
effort to be relatable; he and Drescher doubled down
on the brights, even making the sets a polite, neutral
cream to make the costumes pop. What they tele-
graphed was an irrepressible presence. “She was such
a strong person,” Brown said in an interview. “She
was kind of this irreverent woman who didn’t care
what people thought about her. I feel like that’s the
energy we have now.” Brown has occasionally tried posting the
outfits of another 1990s TV heroine, Sabrina the Teenage Witch,
but she didn’t get the response Fran has.
At The Wing, the crowd laughed politely through Indebted,
then roared for Drescher’s onstage Q&A. Afterward, she took
questions from the audience.
“I’m not going to stand, because I think if I stand, I’m going
to pass out,” said a young woman up front when handed the
microphone. “You’re such a hero of mine. I grew up watching
you; I’ve seen every episode a million times. I can’t believe I’m
in the same room as you. Thank you so much for all the work
you’ve put out into the world.” She went on, “While I’m not
Jewish, I’m Latina, to see a woman really use her ethnicity,
especially in the ’90s, meant so much, and I really resonated
with it so much.”
After her, a young man—rare for The Wing but never for
Fran—with sunglasses perched on his close-cropped skull, was
briefer. “I went through a lot of trauma in high school,” he said,
quavering. “And watching you really got me through a lot.”
Before the event ended, Drescher led the room in a recita-
tion of the mantra a spiritual adviser once taught her: “I love
you, Fran,” she was to repeat to herself. “I know how wonderful
you are. It’s Fran and Fran till the end of time.” She encouraged
everyone to insert their own name to self-love their way to
spiritual enlightenment, but the response that came back still
echoed with Frans. ■ PHOTOGRAPHS: STYING ASSISTANT: DEVINE BLACKSHER; SET DESIGN: ANDREW ONDREJCAK AT LALALAND ARTISTS; MAKEUP BY FULVIA FAROLFI FOR CHANEL AT BRYAN BANTRY; HAIR: ITALO GREGORIO AT BRYAN BANTRY; PARTS MODEL: ELISAVETA AT PARTS MODELS; MANICURIST: HONEY AT EXPOSURE NY; TAILOR: LUCY PAYNEDOLCE & GABBANA
jacket, vest, and pants,
at dolcegabbana.it;
SHANNON PHILLIPS
hat, at nethats.com; RENÉ
CAOVILLA shoes, at
renecaovilla.com; bow tie,
made by LUCY PAYNE.