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Jewish actors play
Jewish mother and son
in new sitcom.

GERRI MILLER

Special to the Jewish News

R

eturning to television this month as a
woman with two children and a much
younger boyfriend hits pretty close to
home for Nanny alumna Fran Drescher.
In fact, Living With Fran, a new WB sitcom pre-
miering Friday, April 8, is a case of art imitating
life. Drescher was in a four-year relationship with a
man 16 years her junior and was developing a
show based on the idea when, in typical
Hollywood synergy, she was approached to star in a
show with a similar premise.
"It was originally a vehicle for the son who
comes home to find his mom in the arms of a
younger man, but now it spins around me," says
Drescher, who as Fran Reeves — last name cour-
tesy of a British ex-husband, played by Nanny co-
star Charles Shaughnessy in a recurring role — is
both playing out and reliving a 40-something's fan-
tasy.
"She's a woman who is essentially living her life
backwards. Her kids are essentially grown, and it's
time for her to discover who she is and to do many
of the things she felt cheated out of during her
youth, when she was raising children.
"I got married when I was very young, divorced
and needed to find out who I was," Drescher notes
in comparison. "I'm also living my life backwards.
I started dating when I was 40."
Drescher, an executive producer of the show,
mines her own experiences for ideas, such as her
ex-boyfriend's desire to keep his own apartment.
Her TV beau gives his flat up, "but in real life, [my
boyfriend] kept the apartment, and now he's back
in it," she says in her characteristic laugh.

.Jewish Humor

For Ben Feldman, 24, who plays Drescher's 21-
year-old son, Josh, the show's premise rings equally
true.
Feldman's mother, long divorced from his dad,

4/7
2005

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Ben Feldman as Josh Reeves, Fran Drescher as Fran Reeves, Ryan McPartlin as Riley Martin and Misti Traya
as Allison Reeves in "Living With Fran"

runs a bed and breakfast in the south of France
with her 23 years-younger boyfriend. "So the reac-
tions all come pretty naturally to me," says
Feldman, who bonded immediately with his TV
mom and shares her enthusiasm for portraying a
Jewish character.
"There are no real sitcom Jewish families right
now," he points out, noting that Jewish humor is
part of the show's fabric. "I can't think of one
episode where we don't reference it."
Drescher is happy to continue the tradition of
Jewish humor she began on The Nanny, where as
Fran Fine she "spoke Yiddish, went to temple,
went to Israel and didn't apologize for it. I did not
grow up religious and I was not bat mitzvah, but I
grew up with a very strong sense of my heritage
and a pride in Jewish history," she says. "I'm very
proud of and very comfortable with my Judaism."
Feldman, who grew up in Washington, D.C.,
and Potomac, Md., was raised in the Jewish reli-
gion — though his mother is not Jewish — and
currently has an Israeli girlfriend.

No stranger to Jewish characters, he has a role in
the yet-to-be-released independent film When Do
We Eat?, "about a dysfunctional family at a
Passover seder." The largely Jewish ensemble cast
includes Jack Klugman, Lesley Ann Warren,
Michael Lerner, Shiri Appleby and Mili Avital.
Also featured in this summer's The Perfect Man
with Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear, Feldman is
a product of the Ithaca College drama department
and the New York stage, where he understudied
look-alike Jason Biggs in The Graduate on
Broadway. His first Hollywood break was a WB
pilot about a teenage mayor that never aired, but it
put him on the network's radar and led to Living

With Fran.

Moving On

Drescher has her own independent movie in the
can, Santa's Slay.
"It's a slasher film about a murdering Santa," says
Drescher. "Bret Ratner, a friend of mine, produced