Who was Fran Drescher married to? All you need to know about the SAG-AFTRA president and sitcom star leading Hollywood strike

American actress and SAG AFTRA president Fran Drescher has been making headlines ever since she delivered a fiery speech on July 13, 2023, blasting off Hollywood Studios after they failed to negotiate with the actor's union and avert a strike. On Thursday, the 65-year-old star said that the actors are being “marginalized, disrespected and dishonored” by the studio's new business model and called them "disgusting."

Drescher said that the union has been "victimized" by a very "greedy entity" by the way the studio has been treating them.

"I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty that they’re losing money left and right while giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment."

The SAG AFTRA president's speech was lauded online and Fran was praised online for taking a firm stand against big names in Hollywood. While netizens and other personalities from the entertainment industry have been supportive of actor's union joining hands with the writers union in a strike, people have wondered about The Nanny actress' personal life.

Drescher was in fact married to television writer Peter Marc Jacobson, but the duo divorced after 21 years together after he turned out to be gay.

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Fran Drescher met her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, when they were in high school

As per news outlet MamaMia, Fran Drescher and Peter Marc Jacobson met each other's when she was 15 and they were studying in high school. The duo became friends soon after and began dating. The duo tied the knot in 1978 at the age of 21 and enrolled in Queens University, dropping out later.

While speaking to AOL in 2012, Peter revealed that they moved to California and began writing their own sitcom, adding Fran Drescher's nasally voice was their USP.

"We’ve made a career out of her voice… I write it and she says it. Fran and I started, basically, sitting in a basement watching sitcoms to writing sitcoms, and we created The Nanny."

While Peter Marc Jacobson wrote, produced, and directed The Nanny, Fran Drescher played the lead role of Fran Fine.

While speaking to Oprah in 2011, Jacobson said he had no idea that he was gay when he married Drescher.

"We were living a heterosexual life. I wasn't having affairs on the side or anything like that. I thought that I was straight."

A life-changing event that happened in January 1985 turned out to be a major turning point in their life. Drescher and Jacobson were victims of a violent crime that left the latter traumatized.

He said that he had started taking therapy by the time the tabloids reported it, which led him to "get in touch with a lot of feelings that I hadn't really addressed in the past." Jacobson said that he would get angry because the therapy would eventually made him think about his sexuality. This impacted Jacobson's behavior with Fran Drescher and ultimately their marriage suffered. But he confronted his wife and revealed that he was bisexual.

In an interview with Fox News, Drescher revealed that Peter did not want to end the marriage.

"I needed it to end. I needed to find myself outside of the marriage and he needed to find himself outside of the marriage. He was mad at me for a while."

Their divorce was finalized in 1999 and they did not speak to each other for a year. However, Fran Drescher and Jacobson began talking again after the Happily Divorced star released a book talking about her experience as a uterine cancer survivor. She told Peter that she wanted to see him for his book tour. While speaking to Oprah, she said:

"And that was when he said to me, 'I don't want you to be thrown if when you're doing all this press that somebody says, 'Do you know that your husband is living as a gay man now?' We've been rebuilding our friendship ever since then."

The two have been on great terms since then and also worked together in 2011 on Happily Divorced.