“The man’s gay.”
“And he’s gay.”
“I’m gay” “She’s gay.”
“You’re not gay?”
In November of 1993, Fran Drescher took the zany antics of Lucille Ball and the sexy vamping
of Mae West, and combined them with her own original spin as a flashy girl from Flushing
to create The Nanny.
The character was bold and audacious and lived in a world where queer people were a part
of everyday life.
At a time when most other sitcoms treated gay characters and stories as an awkward crisis
or an opportunity for a Very Special Episode, what was remarkable about The Nanny is how
unremarkable queer characters were in the world that Drescher created.
Hey friends, I’m Matt Baume, I make videos about queer pop culture.
And this time we’re taking a look at The Nanny and what made its treatment of gay characters
and stories special at a time when US sitcoms were juuuust starting to open their closet
door.
For example, take a look at this episode of Friends where Ross and Rachel interview nannies.
They meet a male nanny who’s tender and emotional…
“I really do understand how hard it's gotta be to leave your child with another person.
It's leaving behind a piece of your heart.”
And that’s all it takes for Ross to respond with suspicion:
“Are you gay?”
But now take a look at how the Nanny responds when she detects a male nanny in the next
room.
“I was instantly attracted to him, which means he’s definitely unavailable.
… Plus, did you see that upper body?
… He’s either gay or a priest with a Soloflex.”
And instead of getting hostile and accusatory, like Ross on Friends, to her it’s no big
deal.
“Niles, please, the man’s gay.”
Now maybe it’s just me, but these two clips feel very different.
The dialogue’s similar, the jokes are similar, and yet ... but before we get into that, let’s
talk about what The Nanny is.
And by the way, if you want to watch the shows featured in this video, I’ve got links in
the description to where you can watch them streaming.
And a link to my Patreon if you like these videos and want to help me make more.
So.
The Nanny.
Debut in 1993, Fran Drescher plays a free-spirited nanny to a family of a rich Broadway producer
with whom she has a will-they won’t-they romance despite being from different worlds.
It’s The Sound of Music meets Mame, set against the backdrop of musical theater.
I wonder if we’ll encounter anything gay.
From the very beginning, The Nanny included lots of little gay jokes and references, like
this gag from episode four:
“Oh, I’m feeling a bit queer.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.
But for God's sakes, come out of the closet.”
On its own, that might seem like just a cute little one-off joke.
Maybe even slightly progressive, that she would encourage someone to come out.
But the joke’s actually part of a pattern on The Nanny, a running theme across the series,
of gay people not being a big deal.
In fact, they devoted a whole episode to that idea — Season 2, episode 19, “A Fine Friendship.”
The episode starts at breakfast, with another family’s nanny, a man named Kurt, dropping
off a kid for a playdate.
Kurt is quite handsome, resplendent in denim, but Fran is nonchalant and doesn’t even
bother to flirt with him.
Niles, the butler, is surprised she didn’t make a move:
“The man’s gay.”
She says she can just tell, and proves it:
“Kurt, who understudied Carol Channing in Dolly?”
“Joanne Worley.”
“Hello.”
Now, on one hand, it is perhaps a reductive stereotype to say that gay men are obsessed
with musical theater.
On the other … this line personally made me shriek, because not only am I obsessed
with musical theater, I’m obsessed with the famous Carol Channing/Joanne Worley rivalry
of 1982 when they both played Dolly in two simultaneous productions at theaters just
a few miles away from each other.
But let’s set that aside for a moment, if we must.
Because what makes this scene significant is just how insignificant Fran considers Kurt’s
sexual orientation.
On most sitcoms up through the ‘90s, if a gay character or storyline appears, it tends
to make things weird -- awkward and uncomfortable.
“Oh Suzanne, loosen up.
It’s the 90s.”
“Yeah, well it’s not the gay 90s.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
Lots of guys have homoerotic dreams.”
“Do you?”
“Are you kidding?”
“See I’m even uncomfortable about being uncomfortable.
That’s how uncomfortable I am.”
“Frasier, I’ve come to tempt you.”
“Really?”
“John is a ho…mo…”
“Right.”
“...sexual.”
[Scream]
On a lot of 90s sitcoms, gay characters can’t JUST be gay.
They have to be the main complication of the week, the problem that needs to be resolved
by the end of the episode.
But not on The Nanny.
Everyone is comfortable with Kurt, even the stuffy Mr. Sheffield, who doesn’t mind if
Kurt spends time in Fran’s bedroom.
“It’s a little different with Kurt.
He’s like your friend Val, only with a five o’clock shadow.”
“You’ve never seen Val at five.”
REVERSAL
Fran’s totally comfortable with having a gay friend.
Or at least, what she thinks is a gay friend.
Upstairs, she’s trying on a dress that looks like a salute to gloryholes, and Kurt starts
to get flirty…
“Kurt, what’s tiramisu?”
“I have no idea.”
“Oh my God!
You’re not gay!”
This joke did make me laugh, even though it’s another one based on reductive stereotypes.
Maybe I’m ok with it because I actually don’t know what tiramisu is either.
Am I maybe actually straight?
Anyway, there’s your Act II twist.
What I love about this is that it’s an inversion of the usual gay misunderstanding trope.
A decade earlier, you might see characters freaking out about a gay person in their midst,
like on The Golden Girls…
“I’m quite fond of you.”
“I’m fond of you too.”
But this episode of the Nanny flips it.
Now the problem is that there’s a straight guy there.
“When did you find out you were straight?
And does your mother know?”
Not only that, being mistaken for gay isn’t a big deal for Kurt — as it might’ve been
on other shows.
“I’ve been outed!
I wasn’t even in!”
“Now everyone’s going to think we’re gay!”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
“No, not at all.”
But Kurt takes it in stride.
“If you liked me when I was gay, you’re going to love me now.”
Anyway, like I was saying, it’s a fun flip for surprise-heterosexuality to be the problem,
rather than surprise-homosexualty.
In the end, Fran realizes that she liked Kurt better as a friend than a boyfriend, and after
one more date, that’s the last we see of him.
Almost — we’ll come back to Kurt later.
But this isn’t the last time that the comedy on The Nanny will involve gay characters or
themes.
Following this episode, the show kept it gay with the occasional joke:
“What do you do if you have four queens?”
“Gather round the piano and sing songs from Gypsy.”
Or even the occasional character…
“I don’t know Queens.”
“Well now you know one.”
And sometimes even a storyline.
Take a look at Season 3’s “Oy Vey, You’re Gay.”
Fran has realized that she loves Mr. Sheffield.
So she’s upset when he falls for a woman named Sydney — but, it turns out, Sydney
isn’t going to return his affection.
“I’m gay.”
“You’re gay?
Oh thank God!”
That’s the best response anyone could hope for when coming out — except for maybe this.
“I’m gay!”
“He’s gay!”
“Did you hear the news?
He’s gay?”
And even through Fran’s saying that because she’s relieved to not have a romantic rival,
still, I wish that’s how more people responded to a coming-out in the 90s!
Quick sidenote, this has echoes of the My Brother’s Keeper episode of The Mary Tyler
Moore Show, one of the few shows in the ‘70s where someone has a positive response to a
gay character.
In that episode, Phyllis is upset that her brother is spending time with Rhoda, whom
Phyllis hates.
Rhoda explains to Phyllis why there’s nothing between them:
“He’s gay!”
“He, he … he’s what?”
“I thought for sure you knew, Phyl.
We’re not getting married.”
“Oh Rhoda, I’m so relieved!”
I’ve got a whole video about that episode.
Link to that and many of the other shows I talk about in this video in the description.
Twenty years later, The Nanny picks up that hug and takes it a step further: Sydney asks
Fran if she’s gay too.
Unlike how other shows might handle that question, Fran’s not offended or even insulted.
After she nonchalantly says no, she even seems to consider it for a moment:
“Too bad, I would have asked you out.”
“Great, a gorgeous professional finally asks me out, and it’s a woman.
You’re not Jewish, are you?”
One year earlier, Friends had an entire episode where Chandler freaks out after being mistaken
as gay.
“Can you believe she thought that?”
One year later, Frasier had an episode where he’s terrified he might be gay because he
keeps having gay dreams — featuring the same actor who delivered the queens joke on
The Nanny.
“Well, look who’s up.”
It’s one thing for The Nanny to be OK with having gay characters.
But for Fran to be so unconcerned to be mistaken for queer is truly groundbreaking.
In the 70s, a similar mistake on WKRP in Cincinnati makes a character threaten to jump off a building.
In the 80s, it throws a character into a fury.
“You mean, you’re …” “Well, aren’t you?”
“Well, what do you think?”
But on the Nanny, she seems open to it.
I can’t think of any previous sitcom where someone responds as well as Fran does here
— let me know in the comments if there’s any I’m just not thinking of.
It’s a pretty powerful moment, showing that where Fran is concerned, there’s nothing
insulting or troubling or in any way wrong with being gay.
But there’s one scene that’s even more powerful, and that’s in the Season 3 episode
“Val’s Apartment,” which has one of the weirdest crossovers I’ve ever seen.
In that episode, Fran and her friend Val move into an apartment together, across the street
from a bar full of handsome single men they’re hoping to date.
Can you guess what the surprise twist is going to be???
We’ll get to that in a moment.
But first we need to meet their new landlord.
“Boy I’d like to see the moron that talked you into this dump.”
“Hello!”
Who’s this?
Take a look at this apartment.
This character.
How he’s dressed, what he sounds like … ring any bells?
“And there is no reason on Earth why Prince Charming cannot walk through our front door.”
“Hello!”
It’s Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley!
A sitcom that debuted 17 years earlier in 1978.
Squiggy and Leonard were Laverne & Shirley’s goofy upstairs neighbors.
Now, set aside the fact that Laverne & Shirley was set in Milwaukee and The Nanny is in New
York.
It’s TV magic!
The landlord is clearly Squiggy, and he’s still friends with Leonard.
More than friends, in fact.
“I share the landlording responsibilities with my significant other other, Leonard.
Why we’ve been together now 17 years.
Seventeen years and still no children.
But we keep trying!”
I am very impressed that they were able to get away with a joke that dirty on CBS, and
I’m delighted that The Nanny took an old sitcom that had been off the air for over
a decade and retroactively made two of the characters lovers.
The power that has!
Once again, on The Nanny is unique in that gay characters aren’t a problem.
Yes, Fran’s annoyed because she was hoping to pick up some dates and now that seems like
a lost cause…
“There’s gotta be at least a couple of guys here who are going to be interested in
us.”
“Clang clang clang went the trolley…”
But the problem of the episode isn’t the gays, it’s Fran’s love life that’s the
crisis of the episode.
Compare that to this episode of Maude, where the existence of a gay bar causes an uproar:
“But you see gay people shouldn’t be at a bar having a good time.
They should be at home, alone.
Being ashamed that they’re gay.”
Eighteen years later, and the gays down the street aren’t embarrassing or undesirable.
They’re just the neighbors.
Another thing that sets The Nanny apart is that it’s a world where gay people aren’t
just sassy friends — they actually have relationships.
Squiggy and Leonard are celebrating their 17th anniversary…
“Seventeen is meat.”
And on another episode, Fran meets a recently widowed gay man, and the show acknowledges
that some people aren’t so accepting of their relationship:
“Now he’s gone, and his family, they pretend that I never existed.”
Look at Fran’s reaction — she’s shocked that the family wasn’t more accepting.
Maybe she gets that from her mother:
“And he’s gay.”
“So you seeing him again?”
... “Ma, how desperate do you think I am?
Friday, we’re going to see Showboat.”
It’s just really sweet.
Even older generations are totally fine with the gay character!
This is just how the world created by Fran Drescher works, throughout the run of The
Nanny, from beginning to end.
And even after.
You see, The Nanny wrapped in 1999, and in the years that followed, Fran’s marriage
to her husband ended too.
He was an integral part of the show — you can see his name there in the credits, Peter
Marc Jacobson.
And the two of them met in high school, married young, and stop me if you know where this
is going, he came out as gay in the early 2000s.
But just as Fran the character took homosexualtiy in stride, Fran in real life was pretty accepting.
They remained close, and they even continued to work together.
In 2011, they even developed a show together called Happily Divorced in which Fran plays
… a woman whose husband Peter comes out as gay, but remains close.
“You know Petey, nobody’s life is perfect.
But ours is pretty good.”
And by the way, one of the guest stars who pops up on Happily Divorced is played by the
same actor who played Kurt.
This time, he plays a jerk who cheats on his wife, so I guess Fran dodged a bullet on that
one.
Aside from her TV shows, in real life Fran Drescher has supported GLAAD’s Spirit Day,
she supported inclusive scouting, she put her money where her mouth is and raised money
to overturn Prop 8.
When New York was debating a marriage equality bill, she made ads supporting its passage:
“Join me.
Be a New Yorker who supports marriage equality.”
And after New York passed the bill, she conducted gay weddings.
“I now pronounce you husband and husband!”
And here’s the amazing thing: She’s still going.
Last year, during a pandemic, Fran dropped everything and went to Canada to film Lifetime’s
first gay holiday movie, The Christmas Setup, where she plays a mom who sets up her son
with his childhood crush.
“I don’t need you meddling in my social life.”
“Oh, hi Patrick!”
“Fate that we crossed paths.”
“Fate, or Kate?”
“I’ll just leave you two boys to it.”
And viewers, I’ve watched a lot of gay movies.
Some of them just kind of blur together for me.
But just the trailer for this one made me sit up and get misty-eyed.
How come?
Well, let Fran explain:
“What I love about this movie is that it doesn’t have any angst.
It’s not about, you know, the hardship of coming out or rejecting parents.
It’s none of that.
... I have a son that happens to be gay who I love, you know, dearly.
… And my setups end up being much more successful than any matchmaking I’ve ever done in real
life.”
No angst, so hardship, no rejection.
The son’s not a sassy side-character, he’s not problem, he’s a person, and he gets
to have the sweet schmaltzy story about falling in love.
It took until 2020 for both Lifetime and Hallmark to start making holiday movies with same-sex
couples as the main characters.
2020!
Meanwhile, Fran Drescher’s just casually been including queer characters her whole
career, even back when it would have been far easier to treat them like the crisis of
the week.
But of COURSE that’s no surprise — Fran’s always been a trendsetter.
By the way, there are more great queer moments from The Nanny, and there’s also a fantastic
story about the series of lucky coincidences that led to the show getting made in the first
place.
For more, check out my Patreon.
I’m going to be posting more clips that I just didn’t have room for in this video.
And sign up for my mailing list at mattbaume.com for sneak peeks at what I’m working on next.
Also, please, I’m begging you, let me know if the comments what tiramisu is.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got this weird taste in my mouth.
“Let’s see your mouth…”