How Fran Drescher, the remembered ‘Nanny’, became the leader of the Hollywood actors’ strike

Less than 24 hours after the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike against Hollywood streaming giants began, Fran Drescher he attracted public attention with a fiery speech from his base in Los Angeles.

Qualified corporations as Netflix, Disney and the most important as “disgusting“, he accused the broadcasting authorities of “losing money left and right”, doc “they gave hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs”.

The speech, which quickly went viral, is emblematic of the wider labor fissures unfolding in show business. The decision to go on strike comes after negotiations between SAG-AFTRA, Hollywood’s largest union representing actors and other media professionals, and AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) broke down and ended at midnight on Wednesday, July 12.

‘Oppenheimer’ star Cillian Murphy walks out of UK premiere to join Hollywood actors’ strike

The strike could completely shut down Hollywood productions with writers in the third month of the strike against the studios. Drescher accused executives of “Wall Street and greed being their priority” ignoring the “essential contributors that run the machine”. The union will go on strike today.

Although the grievances were a common manifesto of the play’s workers (they were similar expressions used by the scriptwriters in the first phase of the strike), the rise of the 65-year-old translator as the current head of the actors’ union was less traditional.

Who is Fran Drescher?

Fran was born in the New York district of Queens, in a Jewish family, in 1957.. While attending Hillcrest High School, she met Peter Marc Jacobson, whom she married in 1977, when she was only 21 years old. And soon he becomes his main artistic collaborator.

His first break in Hollywood was a supporting role in a big hit Saturday night feveracting John Travolta. In a brief cameo, in which she played a dancer at a club, she was seen saying “So, are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor?” Hollywood legend.

She finally found fame as a creator and star Nannyan American sitcom in which she starred Jewish fashionista Fran Fine, who becomes a nanny for a wealthy British family. The series, which she produced and co-wrote with Jacobsen, aired on the CBS network from 1993 to 1999 and it was worth it two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.

In 1999, Drescher and Jacobsen divorced, and he later came out as gay.. But the couple continued their creative relationship, writing a sitcom happily divorcedin which he played an actress who accepts the discovery that her husband is gay.

Drescher, a cancer survivorwrote a novel schmanzer cancerin which he talked about his disease treatment experience and the eight years of misdiagnosis that preceded it. Subsequently founded the organization of the same namewhich lobbies for health system reform.

The Hollywood Actors’ Union will go on strike if they don’t reach a new deal with the studios

Fran Drescher, from “TV’s most beloved nanny” to political activist

Drescher has been politically active throughout her career. In 2008, he endorsed then-Senator Hilary Clinton for president. and briefly considered running to replace Clinton as senator from New York. In an interview from in 2017 with sup, she described herself as “anti-capitalist”, emphasizing that she is not “against making money”.but that it must be “calibrated within the spectrum of what is real value”.

Her political activism eventually led her to launch a campaign to run SAG. In 2021, he won a bad election against the actor Matthew Modine to become the president of the guild. Both represented different factions of the union and the feud became so bitter that Modine accused Drescher of spreading lies about him. According to rock hollywoodModine said after the election: “I’m ashamed of Fran Drescher, I’m disappointed”.

Divisions in the guild were so emphasized that after the Hollywood Writers Union voted to strike earlier this year, lStudio executives dismissed any possibility that the actors were determined to stage their own exit..

But since his election, Drescher has proven to be a steady hand at the helm of the union and oversaw an end to the internal strife that had previously characterized it. Before taking office, he promised to end what he called for “dysfunctional division”. The strike call was ultimately supported by 97.9% of voting membersand Membership comes firstthe opposition faction that recently backed Modine in the 2021 elections supported his re-election.

What are the demands of the writers who have been on strike for a week in the USA?

And while preparing for what promises a tough fight with executives streamingDrescher showed his will combines her political role with the dramatic style that made her famous. “They [los estudios] they are on the wrong side of history immediately,” he told reporters on Thursday when announcing the strike. And pointing his finger towards the camera he said: “We stand in solidarity in an unprecedented unity. Our union, our sister unions and unions around the world support us.” (AND)