New York’s Broadway stages are opening up just in time for The Nanny musical. Fran Drescher told The View this morning that The Nanny Broadway musical is “almost ready to launch.” Where the new chapter will take Fran Fine is still under wraps, but we are buzzing with anticipation thinking about a Broadway style reproduction of insatiably catchy The Nanny theme song.
Sadly, Drescher will not reprise her role as the titular nanny, telling The View that she “really can’t sing.” She says that whoever they bring on as Fran will need to be “the next Barbara Streisand.”
When the plans for the Broadway production were first announced early last year, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s Rachel Bloom and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger were set to write the music. Bloom, Schlesinger, and Jack Dolgen won an Emmy in 2019 for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for their work together on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. However, Schlesinger died in April of 2020 due of complications due to COVID-19 at the age of 52. Bloom is set to continue her work for the musical.
Drescher created and wrote The Nanny alongside her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson in 1993. The two have teamed up once again for the musical production. The original sitcom follows Fran Fine, a Jewish-American fashionista from Queens, who—down on her luck—begins nannying the children of a widowed British Broadway producer. Much of Fran’s character and life was based on Drescher upbringing in Flushing Queens.
The Nanny has retained its popularity over the last thirty years, with streaming services bringing in a younger audience. The continued appeal of the series not only lies in Fran’s fashion and humor, but also in the early positive representations of the LGBT community in sitcom television—which Drescher discusses on The View.
“In The Nanny, over the years that we were doing the show, I wanted to integrate gay storylines without making comments about the person’s orientation,” Drescher says. She continues on to say she sought representation that “made sense” for the show and the characters.
In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she says the longevity of the show also lies in its ageless narrative combined with a ‘90s time capsule feel.
“[The series was] an anomaly unto itself. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. The sexual tension is off the scale. It’s a Cinderella fantasy. The clothes are just like a beautiful, incredible fashion show every single week,” Drescher said. “It’s got that kind of double entendre where you can watch it with the family, and everybody of every different age will enjoy it in their own way. And yet, it’s got kind of like edgy, gay humor. It never lost its cool.”
Agreed.