47 Fun Facts About The Nanny

On which network did The Nanny originally air, from 1993 to 1999?

CBS could easily have pulled The Nanny after a weak first year, but its entertainment chief Jeff Sagansky kept telling affiliates to stick by the show.

Fran Fine grew up in which neighbourhood of Queens?

Flushing is where Fran Drescher went to junior high, and she named Fran's parents, Sylvia and Morty, after her own.

What is Fran selling door to door when she first turns up at the Sheffield house?

Cosmetics were her fallback after her boyfriend dumped and fired her; the Sheffields' butler took her for the new nanny, and Maxwell hired her on trial.

What does Maxwell Sheffield do for a living?

He is a Broadway producer, and a widower too busy with his shows to mind his three children, which is why the house needs a nanny.

What can C.C. Babcock never remember about the three Sheffield children?

Their names escape C.C. Babcock all series long, though she has worked beside their father for almost twenty years and known them all their lives.

Which fact about herself does Fran Fine constantly lie about on The Nanny?

Her age is Fran's best-kept secret: she claims to be 29 season after season, however much time has plainly passed.

Who plays Niles, the Sheffields' butler, on The Nanny?

Daniel Davis put the English accent on: he comes from Arkansas and normally speaks with a Southern one.

The actor who plays Niles also played which villain in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Professor Moriarty got the same put-on English accent as Niles: the Arkansas-born actor played him in two Next Generation episodes and again in Star Trek: Picard.

What do C.C. Babcock's initials stand for, as revealed only in The Nanny's finale?

Chastity Claire comes out at her wedding to Niles, the butler she traded insults with all series, in the finale's last minutes; until then everyone, C.C. included, used only the initials.

How does Fran and Maxwell's family grow in The Nanny's final season?

Fran has twins, Jonah and Eve, in the finale, while Niles and C.C. marry in the same delivery room.

Whom does Maggie Sheffield marry near the end of The Nanny?

An underwear model, Michael Brolin, proposes in the last season; Maxwell objects at first, then gives his blessing after a talk with Maggie.

Who plays Fran's mother Sylvia?

Renée Taylor plays Sylvia Fine; in the final season her real husband, Joseph Bologna, turned up as the doctor Sylvia has an affair with.

Yetta, Fran's grandmother, was played by an actress best known as Millie Helper on which classic sitcom?

The Dick Van Dyke Show made Ann Morgan Guilbert known as neighbour Millie Helper, decades before Yetta, who decides early on that Fran is already married to Maxwell.

Before she became the nanny, Fran worked in what kind of shop, owned by her boyfriend?

A bridal shop was Drescher's nod to her own mother, a bridal consultant; on screen its owner, Fran's boyfriend Danny, dumps her and fires her at a stroke.

The pilot's opening theme was 'If My Friends Could See Me Now', a number from which Broadway musical?

Sweet Charity supplied the pilot's opening, sung by Gwen Verdon; once the series began, an animated sequence with a song of its own took over for good.

What is the title of The Nanny's animated opening theme song?

The Nanny Named Fran was written by Ann Hampton Callaway, who sang it with her sister Liz; it retells how Fran lost her job and her boyfriend and landed at the Sheffields' door.

How does The Nanny's animated opening sequence end?

The camera explodes during a family photo when Fran sets off the shutter, leaving the whole household covered in soot; she shuts the door on C.C. a few seconds earlier.

The idea for The Nanny came to Fran Drescher on a shopping trip in London with whose teenage daughter?

Twiggy's daughter was the teenager Drescher dragged round London's shops; she pitched the result as The Sound of Music with herself at the door, and Twiggy later played Maxwell's sister.

Fran Drescher first won a pitch meeting by cornering network president Jeff Sagansky where?

On a transatlantic flight to Paris, Drescher sat down beside Sagansky and talked him into a meeting, though she and her husband had no idea yet what they would pitch.

Sponsors worried The Nanny's Fran was 'too Jewish' and wanted her changed to what?

Italian American was the proposed switch, which Drescher refused; the producers instead made the Sheffields British, so that Fran would read as the American viewers rooted for.

Why did The Nanny tape before hired, pre-screened 'laughers' instead of a regular studio audience?

Drescher feared strangers after a break-in at her home in 1985, so Central Casting supplied vetted audiences, and its casting director became the first 'laugher wrangler'.

Which sitcom crossed over with The Nanny when its star appeared as Fran's old high-school classmate?

Everybody Loves Raymond lent Ray Barone to Fran's class reunion in 1998; in real life Ray Romano and Fran Drescher were classmates at Hillcrest High School in Queens.

Which real-life figure is Maxwell's perpetual professional rival, a running gag on The Nanny?

Andrew Lloyd Webber always seems to have the upper hand, and Maxwell never gets over having turned down the chance to produce Cats.

Which hereditary title did the actor who plays Maxwell on The Nanny inherit in real life in 2007?

Baron Shaughnessy is the title: it passed to Charles Shaughnessy when a cousin died without heirs, and it was first given to his great-grandfather, who ran the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Before The Nanny, the actor who plays Maxwell spent eight years as Shane Donovan on which soap opera?

Days of Our Lives made him the secret agent Shane Donovan, and the soap never quite let him go: he went back to the role in 2002 and again in 2010, after The Nanny had ended.

Bobbi Flekman, the brash publicist Fran Drescher revived on The Nanny, first appeared in which film?

This Is Spinal Tap gave Drescher the publicist in 1984; on The Nanny she is Fran's double, so Fran has her locked in a bathroom and takes her place to test Maxwell.

Which comedian played a dream date of Fran's who turned out to be her cousin?

Jon Stewart played Bobby, a Jewish doctor Fran meets at a singles bar in a 1997 episode, only to learn at a family wedding that they are cousins.

Pamela Anderson guest-starred on The Nanny as which character?

Fran's glamorous nemesis, Heather Biblow, stole both her fiancé and her job; Anderson played her in two 1997 episodes, the second making Heather a soap star.

Which legendary musician played Yetta's fiancé Sammy on The Nanny?

Ray Charles played Sammy, who turns out to be Bryant Gumbel's uncle and uses the connection to get Fran a television audition.

Whose Pomeranian, Chester, appeared as C.C.'s dog in more than a dozen episodes?

Fran's real parents also appeared, first in a therapist's waiting room and later as Uncle Stanley and Aunt Rose.

The Nanny's 'you got some 'splaining to do' jokes are nods to which comedy legend?

Lucille Ball was the model: Drescher said the show depended on keeping Fran the essential clown, as Ball was in I Love Lucy.

Which actress plays C.C. Babcock on The Nanny?

Lauren Lane was pregnant for half of season five, so C.C. was hidden behind props, given a scripted weight gain and written out for several episodes.

The Nanny's only Emmy, from twelve nominations, honoured which part of the show?

Costume design won in 1995 for Brenda Cooper, who dressed Fran; Drescher's own two nominations for lead actress came to nothing.

The French version of The Nanny is titled 'Une nounou d'enfer', meaning what?

A Hell of a Nanny ran and reran on France's M6 channels for more than twenty years, until the rival TF1 group snapped up the rights in 2018.

In The Nanny's finale, to which state do the Sheffields move?

California beckons because Maxwell has a sitcom to make there; Maggie and Brighton head for Europe instead, while Niles and C.C. make the move too.

Which singer is Fran Fine's lifelong idol, invoked again and again on The Nanny?

Barbra Streisand is Fran's idol, yet when Barbra is due at a family wedding in the last season, Fran still manages to miss her twice.

Fran Drescher's first screen role was a small part in which 1977 film?

In Saturday Night Fever Drescher played Connie, a dancer who asks John Travolta's Tony Manero whether he is as good in bed as on the dance floor.

In 2021 Fran Drescher was elected president of which organisation?

Drescher was elected SAG-AFTRA president in September 2021 and led the union through the 118-day actors' strike of 2023.

Gracie, the youngest Sheffield, is in what kind of treatment when Fran arrives?

Gracie is in psychotherapy when Fran arrives, and her precocious habit of analysing everyone in clinical language is a running joke.

On which real talk show does Fran become a regular guest, handing out parenting advice?

The Rosie O'Donnell Show picks Fran out of its audience and makes her a regular, until a jealous Maxwell invents a ghostly warning dream to scare her into quitting.

Fran loses a string of black pearls belonging to which screen legend, who guest-starred as herself?

Elizabeth Taylor trusts Fran to take the necklace to a courier; Fran delivers it herself instead, bumps her head in a cab and wakes with amnesia and no pearls.

Who plays Fran's long-unseen father, Morty Fine, when his face is finally shown on The Nanny?

Steve Lawrence, the singer, first shows Morty's face in the final season, when Fran coaches her father on winning Sylvia back from a doctor she has been seeing.

At which landmark is Maxwell's marriage proposal drowned out before Fran can hear it?

Niagara Falls roars over Maxwell's proposal at a Fine family reunion; he then slips, falls and forgets he ever asked.

What does Maxwell blurt out to Fran on a turbulent plane ride, then take back once they land?

That he loves her: Maxwell says it when he thinks the plane from Paris is going down, retracts it on landing, and for a season the two call the episode only 'the Thing'.

What is Sylvia Fine, Fran's mother, almost always doing when she turns up on The Nanny?

Eating is Sylvia's running gag: her appetite is insatiable, and the only thing she pursues harder than food is a husband for Fran.

In which country was the local remake so popular that American writers were hired to pen new scripts?

Russia's remake, My Fair Nanny, was such a hit that after all the original episodes had been adapted, the American writers were hired to write new ones.

How does Niles the butler usually learn everyone's secrets in the Sheffield house?

He eavesdrops shamelessly, listening at the intercom and 'cleaning' keyholes, then steers events in Fran's favour.