The Nanny’s Fran Drescher Returns To TV In NBC Sitcom Indebted

Fran Drescher entertained audiences for years as The Nanny and then again on the sitcoms Happily Divorced and Living With Fran. Now, she’s back in a new show on NBC titled Indebted in which she plays a woman who needs to move in with her adult children.

Fran Drescher Returns To TV

The premise of the show features young parents, Dave (Adam Pally) and Rebecca (Abby Elliott), who are finally done with changing diapers only to have Dave’s financially-strapped mother, Linda (Drescher) and father Stew (Steven Weber), show up on their doorstep.

“It’s exciting,” Drescher told TV critics in Pasadena, CA last month, noting that she began The Nanny over 25 years ago! “Physically it gets a little harder…[but] I don’t need to have a life outside of work, so I go home, I lie down with my dog…”

Nanny fans will find parallels between Fran and Linda. “I am pretty much a persona that is seen very vividly in all of my characters. [T]his is the first show I’ve not been called Fran for many, many years. [Linda] is going through a different kind of a life experience… She’s finding herself a little out of money, out of luck in terms of how that goes.”

Beloved Characters

What’s similar is that Linda, like Fran, is lovable. “I like to play characters that are not mean spirited,” Drescher adds. “I like to play people that are positive and loving. When I first started off my career, I was always kind of the hooker with the heart of gold. I don’t like to be mean. I like to be self-deprecating, so that’s sort of my brand of comedy, and I think that my fans have embraced that.”

Indebted will, hopefully, keep Drescher employed for years. Is there a chance for a revival of The Nanny? “I’m a little older now,” she notes, adding with a smile, “We would have to call that series ‘The Granny.'” Indebted debuts tonight in its regular Thursday time slot at 9:30 p.m. ET on NBC.