Fran Drescher Is Living Comfortably, but She Puts Passion Before Money

After Fran Drescher stunned at Paris’s 2024 Fashion Week, fans of The Nanny actor and SAG-AFTRA president want to know more about her. While Fran’s on-screen career began in the 1970s, she really came into her own as a comedic actor in '80s films such as Gorp, This Is Spinal Tap, and UHF. By 1993, she starred in and produced The Nanny.

Throughout her decades-long career, Fran, who was born and raised in Queens, N.Y., has been nominated for multiple Emmys and Golden Globes. After surviving a home invasion-turned-sexual assault and cancer, Fran dedicates her time to fighting for justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and of course, leading the actors’ union towards fair pay and treatment. But what is Fran’s net worth?

While Fran Drescher is still an active voice in the industry, her net worth lies somewhere in the middle of most actors’ levels of wealth. By the end of her time on The Nanny, she was paid $1.5 million per episode, leading to an overall salary from the show of $30 million. But since then, she has taken on various guest spots on shows like Broad City and Mr. Mayor.

Fran continued to create, produce, and star in various series as a version of herself, but nothing quite lived up to The Nanny. She played Fran Reeves in a 2005 series called Living with Fran and Fran Lovett in 2011’s Happily Divorced. In the world of film, Fran voiced Eunice in the Hotel Transylvania films and played Diane in 2019’s After Class. Her starring role in 1997’s The Beautician and the Beast resulted in a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress.

Fran and her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, were high school sweethearts before they married at just 21 years old in 1978. They both attended and dropped out of Queens University together and then started collaborating on writing their own sitcom. Peter was a frequent collaborator of Fran’s, and the pair is credited with creating The Nanny.

However, in 1996, Fran and Peter decided to separate. They had been married almost 20 years at this point, worked together on several television shows, and even survived the trauma of an armed robbery that resulted in a sexual assault on Fran in 1985. But by 1999, they made their divorce official. Peter then had to reckon with his sexuality while Fran was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

“After the divorce, I didn’t talk to her for a year,” Peter told Guy Spy. “I was like an alcoholic hitting bottom. My family passed away, I had no brothers and sisters, and I couldn’t lie to myself.” But when he got the call that Fran was diagnosed with cancer, “That phone call changed everything. In that moment, the anger was lifted, and all that was left was the love. I came back [to Los Angeles] to cast a movie, and slowly we began to rebuild our relationship.”

While filming The Nanny, they lived a totally “heterosexual life,” he explained. “Part of me always knew I was gay, but I buried it down. I fell in love with Fran in high school. We grew up a couple of blocks from each other. I saw shrinks and they said I was straight. I thought ‘I love her, so I’m going to take that path.’ We certainly had more sex than a lot of straight couples I know.”

But the marriage had to end sometime so Peter and Fran could be their authentic selves. Instead of coming to terms with himself, Peter projected that onto Fran by trying to control everything about her, “How she dressed, how she acted, her weight,” he admitted. But they got back on good terms.

“Peter and I are soul mates and the deepest of friends,” Fran said. “We choose to be in each others’ lives in any capacity. Our love is unique, rare, and unconditional; unless he’s being annoying.” That sounds like true love to us!

While we may feel like Fran is like our collective mother after growing up with her on The Nanny, she never had any children of her own. "I think I would have been a good mom, and sometimes I think I kind of missed out on that,” she told Little Things in August 2023. Fran has played several maternal characters throughout her career.

But she never had her own kids, which is partly because of her cancer journey. Fran’s uterine cancer resulted in a surgery that caused her to be unable to have biological children. “Suddenly I was a person who couldn’t have children,” she explained. “But I gave birth to a book, Cancer Schmancer, and launched a movement with the goal of transforming people from patients into medical consumers."

Now, all of Fran’s constituents in SAG-AFTRA are like her children, and she definitely cares for them. In fact, she doesn’t collect any salary from her work as president, so it’s all about passion for her.