Renee Taylor as ‘The Nanny’ turns 30: ‘It was like a real family’
“The Nanny” premiered Nov. 3, 1993 — and, if not for series star Fran Drescher, the world would never have seen Renee Taylor in her Emmy-nominated role as Fran Fine’s mother, Sylvia.
“They didn’t want me on the show,” Taylor, 90, told The Post. “They wanted someone who was Episcopalian; they wanted Sheila MacRae to be the Jewish mother. Those were in the days when they didn’t want Jews to play Jews.”
But Drescher and series co-creator/showrunner Peter Marc Jacobson — her then-husband — were big fans of Taylor and her husband, actor Joe Bologna, who often worked together and who snared a 1970 Best Screenplay Oscar nomination for “Lovers and Other Strangers.”
“Fran had seen my [1971] movie, ‘Made for Each Other,’ with me and Joe,” she said. “She and Peter were fans from when they were in high school and they used to call themselves ‘Renee and Joe.’ Fran said to me, ‘Renee, someday you’re going to play my mother.'”
(“The Nanny” characters Sylvia and Mort Fine were based on Drescher’s real-life parents. Steve Lawrence played Mort Fine; Drescher played Sylvia in flashbacks early in the series.)
When CBS made it known that it wanted MacRae for the role of Sylvia, Drescher took matters into her own hands.
“She said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,'” Taylor said. “‘We’ll bring you on the show as a guest [star] and let’s just say, ‘Hey, she might be good as the mother!’ And that’s exactly what happened. It was like [the network suits] ‘discovered’ me, like, ‘Oh, yeah, she might be good.'”
“The Nanny,” which enjoyed a six-season run (1993-1999), posited Drescher as New Yorker Fran Fine, who, through a series of events, meets and is hired by widowed British Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) as a nanny for his three children: Maggie, Brighton and Grace (Nicholle Tom, Benjamin Salisbury, Madeline Zima).
The Sheffield household also included snarky butler Niles (Daniel Davis); other featured characters included Maxwell’s business associate CC Babcock (Lauren Lane) and Fran’s Grandma Yetta (Ann Morgan Guilbert, best-known as Millie Helper from “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
“It was like a real family even though we were playing a family [on the show],” Taylor said. “We were all madly in love with Mr. Sheffield and wanted to run away with him and be happily married.
“I met Fran’s mother who, by the way, is a big flirt,” she said. “I sort of fashioned my performance after her and I was inspired by her. She said, ‘Oh, your hair is so high on the show,’ which was funny — because her hair was even higher.”
Taylor said one episode of “The Nanny,” in particular, holds special significance to her — “Where’s the Pearls?” in which Elizabeth Taylor guest-starred as herself, visiting Mr. Sheffield’s house after which Sylvia convinces Fran to courier Taylor’s string of black pearls to a photoshoot (cue the farcical situation).
“I loved when Elizabeth Taylor was on the show,” she said. “I was nominated for an Emmy [that season]. It was so fun meeting her and being on the show with her. I asked her if I could try on her $4 million diamond ring and she said ‘No!'”
Drescher has spoken about rebooting “The Nanny” as a series or a Broadway musical.
Taylor said she and Drescher are still close, even 24 years after “The Nanny” finished its run, and that she would likely appear in a “Nanny” musical that is in the works.
(Drescher told The Post in 2018 that she was thinking of rebooting “The Nanny” as a TV series with Cardi B.)
“I still see Fran very often. She lives just around corner from me in Manhattan,” she said. “I live right across the street from Lincoln Center in Lincoln Plaza … and I see her whenever she comes into town. I had breakfast with her a few weeks ago.
“Dan Davis came to my 90th birthday party, he’s a wonderful guy, and the kids flew into New York for the party,” she said. “I stayed close with all of them. What I remember about [the show] is the laughs … and we would roller skate from one part of the set to the other (well I did, anyway).”
Drescher, of course, is now the president of SAG-AFTRA, which has been on strike since July and making headlines nearly every day.
Taylor said she warned Drescher not to take the job.
“When they asked her to run for SAG-AFTRA [president] I said, ‘Don’t to it,'” Taylor recalled. “I said, ‘Your life will never be your own. People will call you in the middle of the night. No matter what you do it won’t be right because someone will always said they have a better idea.’
“But there she is.”
Taylor joins Joy Behar in the cast of “Bonkers in the Boroughs,” a series of five short plays written by Behar that opens Nov. 3 as part of the New York Comedy Festival (at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center). It also features Susie Essman and Jackie Hoffman.
She said “The Nanny” still resonates for people of all ages.
“People were stopping me on the street [during its original run] and they still are,” she said. “When I did ‘My Life on a Diet,’ my off-Broadway play here, people came and brought their grandmothers.
“It was like three generations of fans.”
