Embed from Getty Images
Back in 2017, Fran Drescher said that she was interested in doing a reboot of The Nanny and that she was taking meetings. Last September, she announced that she was talking with Cardi B’s team about the possibility of Cardi starring in a reboot. Fran stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday to talk about her new sitcom, Indebted, which premieres this week. She’s also developing a musical based on The Nanny. Fran shared a story about working on the original show with guest star Donald Trump, who played himself.
Trump loves talking about how much money he [supposedly] has. He even wants to talk about it in the fictional world of a television show set in New York, and he wants to make sure that everyone knows how rich he is. Don’t call him a lowly “millionaire,” which is what Fran’s character initially did during a scene with Trump and Charles Shaughnessy, who played Fran’s boss, Maxwell Sheffield:
“I stood in this scene and I said to the two of them, ‘Oh, all you millionaires are alike,'” Drescher explained of the scene in which Trump, 73, appeared, in 1996.
“And Peter [Marc Jacobson] — now my gay ex-husband — got a note from his assistant, Donald Trump’s assistant, that said, ‘Mr. Trump is not a millionaire. He’s a billionaire, and we’d like you to change the script,'” Drescher explained.
But the Indebted star said she thought using the word “billionaire” “seemed too on the money.”
“Cause I know Fran would’ve, you know, described everyone who was rich as a millionaire,” she said of her character on the show, Fran Fine. “But to say ‘billionaire’ seems like a specific choice.”
“So we asked them if it would be okay if we wrote ‘zillionaire’ and he said that was fine,” she told Meyers with a laugh.
The
I can’t even groan about this, only say, “Of course that’s what Trump did.” If it were anybody else, we’d just roll our eyes and laugh at the person’s ego, but this story is both pathetic and retroactively chilling, because it underscores what we’d learn about Trump’s obsession with controlling the narratives about himself to the point where he fixates on ridiculous things. Who cares how much money he has? That’s (in the world of the show), totally irrelevant. Fran is making fun of Trump and Max, who are both Very Rich People. That’s the joke. Whether Trump is a millionaire or a billionaire is beside the point. Of course, we also know that Trump can’t take a joke, either. I’m watching to see if he ends up tweeting about this. He’ll probably say that he thought “zillionaire” was funnier, so he suggested it.
Fran Drescher said everyone eventually agreed to “zillionaire” after Trump's 1996 cameo "billionaire" moniker demandshttps://t.co/0l4Dw1NYmM
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 5, 2020
The creator and actress is developing her '90s sitcom into a musical https://t.co/QhXUNfcVfE
— CR FASHION BOOK (@CRFASHIONBOOK) February 2, 2020
This man’s pettiness knows no bounds….
Two sentences that will be his legacy:
There is always a tweet.
Of course he did.
I love Fran and she had a show on T a few years ago and I loved it, along with Hot in Cleveland and another show with Kirsty Alley. I am not sure why they took them off the air as they were great tv.
I didn’t like the Kirstie Alley one but loved the Fran Drescher one and Hot in Cleveland, miss them!
Ugh he’s just so sickening 🤮
I love Fran Drescher.
I was just thinking about her yesterday! Love her