Fran Drescher on Being Jewish and Making a Christmas Movie: ‘I Celebrate Anything That Feels Happy and Positive’

Everybody’s favorite nanny, Fran Drescher, stars in a Lifetime Christmas movie, The Christmas Setup (Dec. 12). Drescher, 63, plays Kate, who can’t resist matchmaking when her New York lawyer son, Hugo (Ben Lewis), comes home to Milwaukee for the holidays, setting him up with Patrick (Blake Lee), his secret high school crush.

What drew you to The Christmas Setup?

I love that it’s Lifetime’s first LGBTQ holiday rom-com. I always go to the mat for gay civil liberties and any marginalized group. The more we can normalize it by showing it in stories like this, the better it’s going to be for society as a whole.

Tell about your character, Kate.

She’s very positive; she’s a force. She’s very into her community and is unconditionally accepting of her children. She gives for the greater good, and I like that.

You were diagnosed with uterine cancer 20 years ago, and Cancer Schmancer is your advocacy passion project. How have you worked on that during the pandemic?

We immediately shifted gears and said, “Let’s do a Zoom interview series called Corona Care 4 You.” We interviewed outside-of-the-box medical doctors from all over the world who offered advice for people on how to help support your immune system, what you might do should you test positive and things to do to support your body to fight the virus.

What’s the happiest you’ve been this year?

I celebrated my 20-year anniversary of wellness on June 21. I always thought I was going to have a major bash, but we were in lockdown. I was one of eight girlfriends that all socially distanced on my deck. We ate and laughed and were all together, and that was a very joyful experience.

So what’s a nice Jewish girl doing in a Christmas movie?

We filled in a little back story. Kate does come from New York, but she fell in love with a guy that she met in college and he wanted to go back to his hometown, Milwaukee. She left her friends and family to be with him, but it turned out OK. I personally, even though I’m Jewish, I’m a Buddhist, and I celebrate Christmas. I celebrate anything that feels happy and positive and brings family and friends together under the most joyful of circumstances. I blur all the lines. Just whatever makes your heart sing, go for it.

When we were doing The Nanny, the network said, “Let’s do a Christmas episode.” And you know what that was? We went to Israel and stayed in a kibbutz. That was over the Christmas holidays; that’s how we wrote the story. We’ve been blurring those lines for almost 30 years.

Kate plays matchmaker for her son. Is that something that you do for your friends, or maybe they like to set you up?

I have set people up, but I’ve never been as successful as Kate has in this movie, and nobody has really set me up in a long time. It’s kind of a tall order. It’s hard to set me up.

Actors Ben Lewis and Blake Lee are married in real life. Sometimes that’s a good thing because people bring their chemistry, but sometimes it’s intimidating and they don’t want to show their real-life chemistry. How do you think they did for this story?

I talked to them about that quite a bit on the set and they were trepidatious about it, but then eventually they found their groove and actually thought it was a good thing. It added a new dimension to their relationship, working together like that. It was very nice.

What was it like in your COVID work bubble?

Everybody was tested every other day, and the cast were the only members of the production team that didn’t wear their masks, obviously, so we hung out with each other, and that was it. I was kind of the mom onscreen and off. I had dinner parties in my apartment for our cast. We were all staying in the same building. It was a beautiful cast of people, and the director and executive producer. I was very, very grateful to be with such a joyful, sweet group. We shot it in Canada, and the people there, they’re a dear people. And I got to spend time with Danny and Donna Aykroyd, my friends. That’s where I did my quarantine.

Before the lockdown, you were working on the Nanny musical to take to Broadway. With Broadway currently shut down, are you still working on that?

Oh, yes, we’re actively working on it with Rachel Bloom. My ex-husband, Peter Jacobson, and I are writing the book and Rachel’s writing the songs. Unfortunately, Adam Schlesinger, our composer, died of COVID, so we have to get another composer. But in the meantime, she’s writing wonderful melodies and fabulous lyrics, and now we’re working more together to blend the two. For us to have this protracted time is only a positive thing because we keep fine-tuning it, and it’s going to be fantastic. I cannot wait for Broadway to reopen.

Will the Broadway show resemble the TV show?

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yes, it’ll be slightly adjusted for the large stage with big productions and an arc for the character, but it will be very familiar with the same humor, the same comedy, the same pathos and the same global message that it doesn’t matter what you look like or what you sound like, it’s what’s in your heart that counts. And there’ll be the added thing of how Fran Fine grows as a human being through the journey of the musical.

The Nanny was such a successful TV series; not so much your most recent sitcom, Indebted. Despite that, do you think you have another comedy in your future?

Indebted was not a show I produced myself, and I think I will not work for somebody else unless it is a short-term commitment like The Christmas Setup. I have to write and produce and create my own projects. I do have one that I’m thinking about, but I’d like to write and maybe direct a movie, and not do another series, which is a lot of the same for me, I realized. I like climbing different mountains, I don’t really need to be on a dark soundstage week in and week out for years on end anymore.

I think this whole COVID lockdown period and everything gave me an opportunity to really self-reflect and decide what I want to do with the next chapter of my life, how I want to spend it. I don’t know if doing another series is the answer. I’ve done it many times. We did Happily Divorced, I did Living With Fran, I did The Fran Drescher Show. It’s a lot. The Nanny prevailed as the one that has endured the test of time.

With all that’s going on, what are you grateful for in 2020?

I’m in South Florida and I finally got to see my parents and hug them. I just cannot waste any more precious time. They’re too elderly and we just have to take the necessary precautions and be together. And it was time for us to diversify our microbiome so we could be together as a family. And so, my sister’s here and I’m here. My dad turns 91, and we’re going to be together for his birthday.

I’m very grateful that I have them. I’m grateful that I live in a time when I can see them every day on Facetime, and I’m grateful to have my house. I’m grateful to have the level of friendship and love with my gay ex-husband, Peter Jacobson, and I’m grateful that I got to do this lovely movie.

The movie pried me out of the safety of my home, where I was basically inside almost completely for five months. And then I got a call: “Do you want to do this movie? And if you do, you’ve got to be on a plane in a week.” I said, “I’ve got to bring the dog. I want to quarantine at the Aykroyds.” And then I busted across the border with a work permit and my pug. It’s been great because it liberated me.

And now I’ve not been back home since August 31, the day I left. I went from Canada to New York, because I have an apartment in New York. I saw a very small bubble of friends there. My sister and her husband, my dearest friend and neighbor there, Frank Lombardi, who’s written and executive produced on everything I’ve ever done, he lives in my building. Then my cousin Meryl, and Renée Taylor, who played my mom on The Nanny and lives across the street from me in New York. And a doctor friend who gave me my COVID test when I arrived there. That was my bubble. Those were the only people I saw, and it was more than enough. I keep it small wherever I go and everybody’s got to live as prudently as I do, and then we hope for the best. So life is good. I’m in gratitude.

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Fran Drescher on Being Jewish and Making a Christmas Movie: ‘I Celebrate Anything That Feels Happy and Positive’