Despite the Covid death last year of its announced co-composer Adam Schlesinger, The Nanny Broadway musical is “almost ready to launch,” Fran Drescher said on The View today.
And no, Drescher won’t be taking the stage as her ’90s sitcom incarnation Fran Fine.
“I really can’t sing,” Drescher said on today’s episode of ABC’s The View. “This is going to be a very heavy singing part, so we’re going to have to find basically the next Barbra Streisand, I think.”
Drescher, who is writing the show’s book with her The Nanny co-creator Peter Marc Jacobson, first revealed the development of a musical adaptation more than a year ago. At that time, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s Rachel Bloom and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger were set to write the music, but Schlesinger died several months later of Covid-19 at the age of 52.
Bloom remains on board the Nanny musical team. She and Schlesinger, along with Jack Dolgen, won a 2019 Emmy for their Crazy Ex-Girlfriend music.
Asked about the musical during her View appearance today, Drescher said, “It’s been very sad to see New York without the theater community, which is really such a pulse for the city, and I’m very, very thrilled we’re coming out the other side and that theater is coming back and we’ll be almost ready to launch The Nanny musical on Broadway as well.”