Is 'The Nanny' the anti-'Nobody Wants This'?
Every nasally-voiced Jewish girl deserves her own Mr. Sheffield.
In 1993, Fran Drescher changed TV as we know it. Or at least that’s what it feels like to me. It would actually be years later when I would sit in front of my TV and watch the first episode of “The Nanny,” and no show since has made me feel more worthy of taking up space as a funny, loud, warm and colorful Jewish woman — like the flashy girl from Flushing herself.
In a way, “The Nanny,” which stopped airing in 1999, was shaped by the same dynamics that many Jewish viewers have been complaining about in “Nobody Wants This,” Netflix’s new big hit about a rabbi (Adam Brody) who falls in love with a glamorous non-Jewish blonde, blue-eyed woman played by Kristin Bell. Fran and her boss-turned-lover Maxwell Sheffield come from different worlds, and while “The Nanny” does not focus on their religious differences nearly as much as “Nobody Wants This” does, their cultural divergences are part of what makes their unlikely match so irresistible to TV viewers.
I’ve written before about how Drescher saw herself in constant conflict with the blonde “shiksa” who always won every beauty pageant and beat her out for every role, how she fought tooth and nail to make women who looked and spoke like her — Jewish women — allowed to be the center of attention. This was all so important to her that when the studio pushed back on Fran Fine being Jewish, Drescher refused to budge.
“When we got green-lighted to write the pilot for ‘The Nanny,’ I guess the network was already talking to major sponsors like Procter & Gamble, who said, ‘It sounds great — we’ll buy the show outright. But the nanny has to be Italian, not Jewish,’” Drescher told LA Times in 2020.
But Drescher said she knew that “this character needs to be written very close to me and all the rich and wonderful characters that I grew up with.”
“Peter [Marc Jacobson, Drescher’s ex-husband and creative collaborator] and I have a brand of comedy that’s rich in specificity, and not only couldn’t we have written it that way — if the character were Italian — but I couldn’t have performed it that way,” she explained. “So we kind of mustered up our chutzpah and said, ‘No, Fran Fine must be Jewish.’”
What resulted was a show that while, through today’s lens, is imperfect — fatphobia was so par for the course in ‘90s TV, but it is still jarring to see it in this show, which I’m sure has some kind of deep psychological impact on me — it still celebrates Jewish women as worthy of their own stage, without having to change anything about themselves, without needing to be more demure:
To be honest, I still can’t think of a bigger TV style icon than Fran Fine. And sure, it took Fran a while to get her man in “The Nanny,” but the man she got was literally her dream prince: the rich, British-accented, romantic Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield. Every nasally-voiced Jewish girl deserves her own Mr. Sheffield.
Maybe more importantly, Fran Drescher showed us what it means to make uncompromising and authentic TV about your own lived experiences. She laid the groundwork for shows like the truly excellent “Broad City,” “Better Things,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Life & Beth.” And despite not always being perfect, Drescher also shows us what it means to be both glamorous and an indefatigable labor leader as the head of the SAG-AFTRA during the strike.
So if you’re feeling down as a Jewish lady after “Nobody Wants This,” just remember: We’ve had great TV about complex and lovable Jewish women, and we shall have more, too. And we have “the lady in red when everybody else is wearing tan” to thank for it.
Who is your favorite glamorous Jewish lady of TV? Let me know in the comments!
As a Jewish woman I am honored to be represented in Nobody Wants This!!!! Frankly, I see a lot of myself and friends exhibiting those characteristics and find it relatable and charming -- I have often been accused of being too sensitive when calling out Jewish tropes and stereotypes but this show was obviously written with love compassion and understanding.
I loved Miss Fine! I was so pleased she found her man. I was having such a hard time finding a Jewish partner in the 80’s that when I reconnected with a non Jewish man I knew in my childhood, who said he had no faith of his own in which to believe, loved me and wanted to be Jewish, I thought it would be a perfect match. And it was! We had a wonderful child, whom we both raised as Jewish, celebrated every Jewish holiday and her beautiful Bat Mitzvah, but I realized ultimately that unless you are raised Jewish, you don’t inherently understand the nuances and culture, vernacular and importance of each holiday in the same way. This is a huge disconnect. And although I love my husband and we are happily together 36 years later, I do miss what could have been had I married a partner Jewish by birth.