Fran Drescher does some soul searching off screen and on in Beautician And The Beast
By NATASHA STOYNOFF
Toronto Sun
February 8, 1999
HOLLYWOOD -- With Fran Drescher, TV's big-haired, big-mouthed Nanny, what you see on the little screen is -- at first -- what you get in real life.
"This is Chestah Dreschah," drones the bubbly actress, introducing her pet Pomeranian (and sometimes co-star) in a nasal brogue befitting a broad from Queens, New York.
"And this is his red peppah," she says, plopping a plastic baggie of crudites and Cap'n Crunch by his paws.
For TV fans who expect their favorite actors to remain in character off-screen, Drescher doesn't disappoint.
And with her frosted lips, teased coif, and horsey guffaw, she's bringing that same chutzpah to the big screen.
In her first starring feature, The Beautician And The Beast, Drescher plays -- surprise! -- a cheery beautician from Queens who becomes a tutor to the kids of a gruff, Eastern bloc dictator (former James Bond Timothy Dalton).
In between readin' and 'rithmetic, she helps the kids with personal problems and thaws the heart of her boss -- a sort of fairytale Nanny Goes To Europe.
"I made a very strategic choice to do a character (similar) to what the public has come to know," explains the actress, citing similar successful TV-film transitions for Michael J. Fox, Tim Allen and John Travolta.
"When Travolta went from being a Sweathog to Saturday Night Fever (a film in which Drescher made her screen debut), he was still playing a guy from Brooklyn, but with a different tone."
Drescher's newest nanny is singing a tune much loftier than her TV counterpart.
"While the character on television is mainly interested in getting married," she says, "this character wants to `find' herself and `elevate' herself."
A former beautician herself ("I went to beauty culture school so I'd have something to fall back on"), Drescher, 38, has been doing some of her own soul searching these days.
Recent reports that she is splitting from her husband of 17 years, Nanny and Beautician co-creater and exec-producer Peter Marc Jacobson, are uncertain since the couple attended the Golden Globe Awards together last month.
To journalists, instructed not to prod the star about personal matters, she hints at her heartache.
"I'm in a lot of therapy," she says, catching a microphone that has fallen into her blouse mid-sentence ("You won't be hearing much but cleavage there").
"I had reached a point where I was emotionally bankrupt," she continues. "Give, give, give ... and deny yourself to take without feeling like a loser or feeling weak. It's very complicated. It goes way back into my childhood. I've been a caretaker my whole life."
Drescher detailed her young years in her autobiography, Enter Whining, published last year. In the book, the actress reveals she was the victim of a rape attack 11 years ago.
Building a tough outer shell has taken a toll.
"I'm trying to round myself out emotionally now so I'm not such a Superwoman," she says. "It's a hard, y'know, thing to live up to."
As a teen, her outlet was in school plays where, "just like most of my career, someone else always got the starring role while I played third banana," she laughs -- loudly.
But she still heard it as her calling.
"Acting was something I could do effortlessly at any given time without being bored."
After comedic turns in films like This Is Spinal Tap and Cadillac Man, Drescher got to be known as the girl with The Voice.
"She's a great, bizarre combination of very beautiful, very sexy, and kinda exotic," says Beautician screenwriter/producer and long-time pal Todd Graff. "Then she opens her mouth and out comes Selma Diamond. They both share the same no-bulls--- quality."
The question now is: Can audiences handle that raw, no-bulls--- voice of hers for a two-hour stretch?
"I don't think The Voice is a detriment," she defends. "I don't think people are gonna say, `Oy! That voice! How long can we listen to it!' People who've known me for years and years get used to The Voice without finding it annoying."
But one of Drescher's favorite scenes in the film, shot mostly around Prague, is a non-speaking, Evita-like moment where she waves to thousands of peasants from a castle balcony.
"I always wanted to do that," she admits. "I grew up watching the commercial with Patti Lupone."
Drescher once tried to tame her twang, she says, but felt her new sound was stiff. "As time goes on, I'll be able to expand myself and play more of a variety."
For now, she's not veering far from home -- keeping in mind it's her approachability that attracts her masses.
"I think I'm less masked than other people, and (audiences) feel a certain rapport with me," she says. "I consider myself an Everyman. I come from a very humble background, and I have a real grassroots kinda mom and pop philosophy about a lot of things ... which I infuse into my characters."
The Everyman is forging kinships overseas, where The Nanny is seen in Africa, South America, Australia, Europe, and is slowly making its way through the Czech Republic. "I'm not in any rush," she says. "You can't dance at every wedding."
On the set of The Nanny, where Drescher is Superwoman, the co-producer/ writer/star wants to add one more notch to her belt.
"I'd like to direct an episode before this ride is over," she says. "Then I'll be ready to move behind the camera ... when I'm not so cute anymore."
THE FRAN DRESCHER FILE
ON HER TABLOID COVERAGE: "They have very imaginative fiction writers sitting in their offices trying to link up anybody with anybody so they can sell their rag."
HER BIGGEST FANS IN EASTERN EUROPE: "The tourists, expatriates and students. Not a lot of natives have satellite yet."
EVEN IF SHE PLAYED LADY MACBETH: "I'd still infuse humor into that character because humor and drama happen simultaneously."
ON THE DALTON-DRESCHER CHEMISTRY: "Together on screen, Fran starts showing a tenderness that wasn't there before and Timothy shows a boyishness," says Beautician director Ken Kwapis. "He makes Fran more romantic and she makes Tim funnier."