Fran Drescher sure knows how to make an entrance.
Wearing the first of several plum-colored ensembles with enormous stand-up collars and headpieces, Drescher struts onto the stage, hollering in her trademark raspy whine, “Cinderella, help me with my parcels this instant!”
It was opening night at the Ahmanson Theatre’s L.A. run of the revisionist musical “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” and the audience responded enthusiastically to Drescher, the most famous face in the talented cast. It’s not the first time she is playing Madame, aka the wicked stepmother; she made her Broadway debut in the role last year in this production, which went on to a national tour without her (her decision). But when her replacement required knee surgery, Drescher stepped back in.
“I wanted to help them out because they were so generous and welcoming to me, and it seemed just too delicious an opportunity to pass up,” Drescher said in an interview with the Journal the day before the show officially opened. But as a newlywed, having married tech guru Shiva Ayyadurai last September, she was concerned about eight performances a week disrupting their lives. The solution? “We’re getting an apartment downtown,” Drescher, who lives in Malibu, said. “We do two shows on Saturday and Sunday, so I’ll have a place to go in between. And it will be fun to embrace and explore the downtown scene.”
Drescher also spent five days on the tour’s last stop in Tempe, Ariz., to rehearse with the cast, and she appreciates the opportunity to make the role her own.
“I’ve infused a lot of glamour into the character,” she said. “The costumes were specifically designed for me. I’ve infused more comedy into it. Basically, I’m playing an extension of the personality and character that the fans have come to know and love.”
The Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical, which originally premiered on television in 1957 with Julie Andrews in the title role, now has added songs — all by the famous collaborators — and an updated book by Douglas Carter Beane that reflects modern sensibilities but retains all the charm of the original. Drescher, who remembers watching the 1965 TV remake with Lesley Ann Warren and “wanting to be her,” believes the timeless story resonates, because “people like an underdog who wins in the end against all odds.”
Drescher, with her pronounced Queens, N.Y., accent, herself bucked the odds to become a star in Hollywood. “I know it absolutely boxes me in,” she acknowledged of her signature voice, “but I do other accents and dialects very well, and I’m so diverse in my interests as a writer, author, producer and director.” Yet, she said, “I don’t really mind that I found a niche that the audience loves, and I keep doing versions of that.”
That’s been the case from her debut in “Saturday Night Fever” to “The Beautician and the Beast,” her TV series “Living With Fran” and “Happily Divorced,” and her Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated turn as Fran Fine in “The Nanny.” Despite network reservations, she insisted on keeping the character of Fran Jewish and was gratified that the show was embraced worldwide, “including many Arab nations. For that reason, I was honored at the Knesset in Israel,” she noted.
While she was not raised in an observant home, Drescher’s Jewish identity is, she said, “as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the sound of my voice, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel like it’s enmeshed in every fiber of my being. I’m very proud of the heritage and the people that came before me and their struggles and their accomplishments.”
Her self-described “HinJew” marriage to Ayyadurai, whom she met at Deepak Chopra’s weekend seminar Sages and Scientists in August 2013, began with an interfaith ceremony, performed by a Hindu priest and Drescher’s Jewish friend who has a license to officiate. “He wore a yarmulke and he represented the Borscht Belt,” Drescher said.
Her husband, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated scientist often credited with the invention of email, “is the genius in the family, but today he lost his wallet, and I have to remind him six times to feed the dog when I’m out of town,” Drescher said, laughing.
Drescher is a survivor of rape, during a home-invasion robbery 30 years ago, and of uterine cancer, with which she was diagnosed in 2000. She has advocated for victims of both, and she turned her best-selling book “Cancer Schmancer” into a movement she considers one of her greatest accomplishments. Right now, its Detox Your Home campaign is encouraging people to reduce the risk of cancer and chronic diseases by purchasing chemical-free foods and products. Two fundraisers are on the calendar, the first in New York on June 21 and the second, a women’s summit at the Skirball Cultural Center in October.
Drescher’s schedule is full of other projects, both completed and percolating.
In September, she’ll reprise the voice of the Bride of Frankenstein in the animated “Hotel Transylvania 2,” and she has another book, a feature film to direct, a theater project to write and direct, and a new TV series in development, once again “loosely based on my own experiences in life,” she said.
Like her previous series, it will likely shoot before a live audience. “It’s like putting on a play. The only real difference is that you’re not flying without a net like you are on stage,” Drescher said. Before “Cinderella,” she appeared in Neil LaBute’s “Some Girls(s)” off-Broadway and in “Camelot” at Lincoln Center, and admitted to forgetting lines “in every play I’ve ever done.” She said she once even missed her entrance during the New York run of “Cinderella.”
At 57, Drescher is proud of her success — both professionally and personally. “ ‘The Nanny’ is a crowning achievement. My survival as a cancer and rape survivor is a huge accomplishment. I contributed to getting an initiative passed into law in Washington. I was appointed Public Diplomacy Envoy, a title that I still hold. I’m very close with my parents, my family and friends. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to become a more refined version of myself, and life keeps offering me opportunities to grow toward that,” she said, “It’s a never-ending journey of learning.”
“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” runs through April 26 at the Ahmanson Theatre.
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