Fran Drescher Reunites With On-Screen Adoptive Mom Renée Taylor, 92, for Mother’s Day
Fran Drescher experienced a bit of a coincidence this Mother’s Day when she celebrated with both her biological and on-screen mom, Renée Taylor!
Drescher, 67, and Taylor, 92, both shared this sweet photo on Instagram. “Fran and baby Sylvia on Mother’s Day at Kaluz Fort Lauderdale. So happy,” Drescher wrote. Taylor shared, “Late Mother’s Day lunch with ‘real’ Sylvia and ‘our’ beautiful daughter Fran.”
The Nanny, which aired from 1993 to 1999, was created by Drescher and her then-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson. Drescher plays Fran Fine, a former bridal shop employee in Flushing, Queens, who becomes a nanny for a wealthy Manhattan family after being dumped by her boyfriend. Taylor’s over-the-top Sylvia is based on Drescher’s biological mother, Sylvia Drescher. Drescher’s onscreen father (who rarely appears on screen) is also named after her biological father, Mort Drescher.
In 1993, Taylor told the Los Angeles Times that she based Sylvia not on the real-life Sylvia, but on her own aunt, who lived in The Bronx. “She was very dramatic. She used to use a fan. She was very flirtatious. She used to go swimming in the summer with an umbrella.”
But Sylvia and Mort were big-time influencers who became accidental celebrities while The Nanny was on the air. They appeared several times on The Rosie O’Donnell Show to review New York restaurants. Sylvia told the Chicago Tribune in 1996, “Rosie asked us to do it, and she was like a surrogate daughter to us. It was like Fran asked us to do something.”
O’Donnell, 63, told the paper that she first wore them because she found their comments about dinner — and the price — funny when she dined with the two and their daughter.
As for Taylor, though she had a long career before The Nanny — including an Oscar nomination for best screenplay for the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers, which she shared with her late husband, Joe Bologna — the role of Sylvia has stayed with her ever since.
“A lot of casting people and producers thought I was that character, that I wasn’t acting,” she told The New York Times in 2010.
“Because of my character, people thought they knew me, and so they could come up and tell me very personal things about themselves,” she told the paper. “They would come up and say, ‘Hi, I know you’re Renée Taylor from The Nanny, and the reason I left my husband was…’.”
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Taylor continued her acting career, appearing on shows like How I Met Your Mother, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Bob’s Burgers. She also did a stand-up show called My Life on a Diet. She has maintained a close relationship with her on-screen daughter since their series ended in 1999.
Meanwhile, Drescher will reprise her role as advertising executive Bobbi Flekman in this year’s Spinal Tap II, a sequel to 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap. She is also the president of the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA.
