BY MARTHA FRANKEL
PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANDREW ECCLES
From In Style Magazine, August 1996
Fran Drescher is in the market for some artwork, looking for just the right piece to place over her mantel. She has come, dressed for the occasion in an orange-and-black Dolce & Gabbana blouse, purple raw linen capri pants, and black mules, to preview Sotheby's American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture sale in New York City. Each time she lingers for more than a moment in front of a particular work, one of the experts in the contingent trailing her is brought over to talk. Drescher is especially drawn to a Thomas Hart Benton picnic scene, but she has her eye on a half-dozen others as well. By the time the retinue has reached an Andrew Wyeth, Drescher is in full form. "I like the content," she announces, pointing to the black-and-white watercolor that depicts an old house with a shirt hanging on a clothesline. "I like the composition. I like the play of light." The specialists nod (the estimate on the painting, after all, is $8o,ooo to $120,000). "And if there was a breeze blowing through the shirt, if it had some life, I would just love it. But without that breeze ... to me this is a total failure." Drescher pronounces it "fail-ya."
By the time they've finished the walk through the gallery Drescher has pages of handwritten notes. "It's not like I come in here not knowing what I want," she says. "I have looked through the catalog, looked up the painters, cross-checked a million things. Peter and I have the same taste, and we know what we like. I collect art that means something to me, like a piece we got in Nantucket or another from Portofino, because we had such great times there. But we're also interested in collecting as an investment. We have some Dali lithos that we got many years ago; a Renoir, a Boggs, and a lot of Hurrell photographs. We love everything starting with the Impressionists. The moderns are our passion. I also love Picasso, Renoir, Degas and van Gogh, and I hope some day to have a lot of examples of their work." She makes a few more notes on her pages,but in the end, she doesn't bid on a thing.
And it's that same aesthetic self-confidence that helped guide Drescher and her husband through a recent renovation-with no decorator in sight. "We didn't need a decorator," says Drescher emphatically, "because we know exactly what we like. It's perfect now."
Fran Drescher, 38, and her husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, also 38, were high school sweethearts who have been together ever since. Both wanted to be actors, and while Drescher had supporting roles in a few films, and Jacobson had work in theater, modeling and commercials, neither was exactly declining offers. So they moved from New York to Los Angeles, hoping their work lives would turn around. And turn around they did. East Coast meeting West proved a winning combination: Drescher's over-the-top New York accent, and her sassy attitude, have helped to make The Nanny a big hit on television.
While their healthy careers can now support shopping trips to Sotheby's, Drescher and Jacobson (he's The Nanny's co-creator with Drescher and the show's executive producer, and they're currently working on a film, Beautician and the Beast) remain in the little house they bought nine years ago. Drescher had done some fixing up of the 1923 house when they first moved in, but now it was time to update it.
The couple did the majority of the work in the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, and then simplified the living and dining rooms. "I think of it as a bungalow, not really a house. It's small, so we have to be careful what we bring into it. We have a rule: If you haven't worn it in a year, out it goes. That way we don't get drowned in stuff." Drescher tells the rest of her remodeling tale with a breathless enthusiasm: "But I like to shop, so I was thrilled to do the renovation, because then I could use my new things! Like the soap dish in the bathroom. I saw it in a ceramic shop in Mexico." Now Drescher digresses. "Tiles are my love. If I wasn't an actress, if I wasn't involved in the million things I'm involved in, I'd be a tile designer. Like, we were in Big Sur having a hamburger at Nepenthe? And we go into the gift shop and they have these Matisse tiles. Now, we love Matisse, and I say to Peter, 'Peter, these tiles are us,' so we used them to form a ribbon around the bathroom walls, like a gallery. Of course, it took me months to settle on the other tiles that go with them. So I see this soap dish with a Madonna and Child on it," Drescher continues, picking up the original thread of her story, "and I love that image because it just seems to exemplify all the good spirit that you can possibly derive from religion or humanity. And there aren't a lot of symbols that I gravitate toward. That set the tone for the bathroom. Then I went crazy looking for tiles to match. I don't make these decisions lightly ... or quickly. But I finally found Italian tiles that would work perfectly with it. Now Peter likes to joke that the soap dish cost $20, and the renovation cost another 2o,ooo!" Drescher throws back her head and lets out that laugh.
There is a quality in Drescher (who costars with Robin Williams in Jack, out this month) that can only be called, well, directed. "That's true," she says. "When we first moved into our house I got this wallpaper for the kitchen that I really loved. Then we needed to knock out a new door to the outside so we could use the patio more." But Drescher, who has a group of a dozen or more friends that get together regularly for dinner, wasn't willing to let the wallpaper go. She "convinced" the contractor to carefully peel back the paper, then just as carefully deconstruct that section of the wall. "For weeks I agonized over how to keep the wallpaper and still get what we needed-and we finally did just that!"
Whether it's the search for the right piece of art, the tiles, the house, or her career, you can be sure Drescher knows exactly what she wants.
