Fran Drescher: Detox Your Home
An Interview with Fran Drescher: Detox Your Home
Fran Drescher is an American film and television comedian, model, actress, producer, ordained Universalist minister, and activist. She is best known for her role as Fran Fine in the hit TV series The Nanny (1993–99), and for her nasal voice and thick New York accent.
Fran Drescher made her screen debut with a small role in the 1977 blockbuster film Saturday Night Fever, and later appeared in American Hot Wax (1978) and Wes Craven’s horror tale Stranger in Our House (1978). In the 1980s, she gained recognition as a comedic actress in the films Gorp (1980), The Hollywood Knights (1980), Doctor Detroit (1983), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), and UHF (1989) while establishing a television career with guest appearances on several series. In 1993, she achieved wider fame as Fran Fine in her own sitcom vehicle The Nanny, for which she was nominated for two Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Television Series during the show’s run. She received further recognition for her performances in Jack (1996) and The Beautician and the Beast (1997) and reinforced her position as a leading sitcom star with Living With Fran (2005–2006) and Happily Divorced (2011–2013).
On June 21, 2007, the seventh anniversary of her operation, Drescher announced the national launch of the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all women’s cancers be diagnosed while in Stage 1, the most curable stage. She celebrated her tenth year of wellness on June 21, 2010. Fran Drescher says:
“ We need to take control of our bodies, become greater partners with our physicians and galvanize as one to let our legislators know that the collective female vote is louder and more powerful than that of the richest corporate lobbyists.” She says her goal is to live in a time when women’s mortality rates drop as their health care improves and early cancer detection increases. More information can be found on her website at cancerschmancer.org A uterine cancer survivor,Fran Drescher is an outspoken healthcare advocate and LGBT rights activist, and is noted for her work as a Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women’s Health Issues for the U.S. State Department. Divorced from writer and producer Peter Marc Jacobson, she currently lives in Malibu, California.
A uterine cancer survivor,Fran Drescher is an outspoken healthcare advocate and LGBT rights activist, and is noted for her work as a Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women’s Health Issues for the U.S. State Department. Divorced from writer and producer Peter Marc Jacobson, she currently lives in Malibu, California.
Interview with Fran Drescher
Sandie Sedgbeer: One of the things you said that intrigues me is that your whole life has been about changing negatives into positives. Now, I want to know how do you do that – especially when everything is going wrong as it did for you when it took two years and eight misdiagnosed by different doctors before you learned that you had uterine cancer. I mean, how do you transform all that frustration, fear, and anger, I’m sure, into something positive?
Fran Drescher: Well, you know it’s something that is a daily practice in how you live your life and you’re not always perfect at it. You just have to subscribe to the idea that you’re on a journey of self-refinement, and everything that comes to you is an opportunity for you to become a better version of yourself on your soul’s journey in this world. So, first, you’ve got to kind of believe that. Then, if you believe that when something bad happens you may say: “Why is this happening; why is this being presented to me in this way; how can I turn this around; what am I supposed to learn from this; how can I benefit by this?” If you think of things through that porthole, it makes the journey of living more meaningful and helps to make sense out of the senseless and offers you a window into seeing how your life can change for the better. For example, by turning pain into purpose, which is what I did, and also by learning to accept the vulnerable situation I was in and reaching out and asking for help; which is something I had never been particularly good at.
Sandie Sedgbeer: That’s a beautiful philosophy.
Fran Drescher:That’s what I do, and everyone is different, but that works for me. That’s why I’m able to turn lemons into lemonade.
Sandie Sedgbeer: In 2007, you published your book “Cancer Schmancer” which was a best-seller, and since then you’ve said that the book was not the end, but rather the beginning of a life mission to improve women’s healthcare in America. You went on to found a Cancer Schmancer movement and a Cancer Schmancer Foundation. Was there one moment, in particular, that solidified for you the urgent need and the determination to do something, or was it a gradual realization?
Fran Drescher: Well, I went on book tours and lecture circuits because the book was successful, and realized that what happened to me was not unique but has happened to many people by 
means of misdiagnosis and mistreatment. And, for many – though thankfully not me – late stage cancer diagnosis is a consequence. So I started to create a vision of changes that I think needed to be addressed, and that’s when I realized that I needed to start an organization where people can, you know, learn new things. The cornerstone of the organization was early detection because: “If you catch it on arrival, 95% survival”, and the reason why we lose loved ones to cancer is almost always due to late-stage diagnosis. That’s basically because the test we need isn’t always on the menu at the Doctor’s office and we’re too quick to give the Doctor all the decision-making power and we become frightened and infantile as a consequence of worrying that there’s something really wrong with us. But that has got to change, and so Cancer Schmancer transforms patients into medical consumers, empowers you with knowledge so you can take control of your body and become better partners with your physician. And now we’re on a progressive program which is prevention, called “Detox Your Home.” So much of medicine in the western world is reductionist, where they deal with the sickness and don’t ask what the causation was. So everybody is trying to solve the problem and find a cure, but they’re not asking themselves the right questions. And that’s why there’s not been one single cure since Nixon waged the war on cancer in the early 1970’s, and trillions of dollars have been plunked into trying to find a cure, and the best really that we’ve come up with is taking a lot of expensive medication to live longer, while chronically ill. If we start asking ourselves “What is the cause of illness and disease?” and eliminate it, then let’s not get cancer in the first place. How’s that for a cure? And so that’s the reason why Cancer Schmancer fills a very unique position in the health space because that’s what we do, and the home it turns out is the most toxic place we spend the most time in. More toxic than living across the street from an Oil Refinery.
So we have to start looking at what we bring into the home because we don’t have control over a lot of things out in the world, but we certainly do about what we bring into our own home where we spend the most time and it turns out is the most toxic. And we teach you how to take the “Check, Choose and Change Challenge.” Check labels, choose healthier, organic, eco-friendly products, and become the change we so desperately need because all of our lifestyles right now is unsustainable. One out of two men and one out of three women are expected to get cancer in their lifetime. The children of today, for the first time in US history, are anticipated to not live as long as their parents, which is why we, at Cancer Schmancer, are producing a detox your home video targeting teens, and I’m very grateful to Mr. Jamie Fox, the Actor, who is going to be the host of the video.
Sandie Sedgbeer: You know, Fran, I was going to ask you what is it about Cancer Schmancer that seems to be so different, and you’ve just described it. It is so much more practical, it’s so much more accessible to women, it is turning everything on its head, and it’s giving them practical advice and information and solutions and empowering people to take care of themselves. And I think that’s huge. You have some great things going, like your early-detection Fran Vans, and your School Assembly Prevention Program, and you’ve just mentioned the Detox Your Home Campaign and your Health Summit. Who comes up with these ideas because they seem to be quite progressive and visionary?
Fran Drescher: Well, you know, I have a team at Cancer Schmancer. We’re a small, lean, mean fighting machine, but I think that I’m the visionary at the helm. I get big ideas, and I’m a producer, and I get passionate about something, and I say this is the next thing we’ve got to work on because if I’m passionate it becomes contagious, my passion, and we can really try and change people’s thinking. Our website is very upbeat, and positive, and motivational, and informative and educational, and we’re inclusive – we’re not exclusive. We want to help other organizations as much as ourselves, and I think the only way to see a change in this 21st century is to lock elbows and march into it with a new vision.
